Horror movies in the Seventies went through a kind of sea change. By the middle of the decade, Hammer were on their last legs having exhausted their Dracula and Frankenstein franchises, and the big Hollywood studios had yet to embrace the genre as fully as they could have, content to leave it to low budget production companies such as Amicus and Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. In Europe, horror movies were more concerned with providing sleaze than monsters, and further afield there were sporadic releases that rarely made an impact beyond their own borders. Zombie movies were still few and far between despite the success of George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), and movies where the protagonists were zombie Nazis were even rarer, with only The Frozen Dead (1966) predating the eerie chills of Shock Waves.

The movie begins in typical fashion, with a group of strangers on a chartered boat that’s seen better days, just like its crusty old captain, Ben (Carradine). The rest of his crew amounts to Keith (Halpin), who seems to be there just to steer the boat, and Dobbs (Stout), the booze-living galley hand. The passengers are a mixed bunch as well, consisting of middle-aged couple Norman and Beverly (Davidson, Sidney), and younger couple Chuck and Rose (Buch, Adams). Norman is already complaining about the age of the boat and the cost of the trip, but when the sky turns crimson and the boat’s instruments don’t respond, he really has something to complain about. An night-time encounter with a mysterious freighter leads to the boat needing repairs, but in the morning, Ben has disappeared. Believing he’s headed towards a nearby island, everyone gets in a dinghy and heads for shore. They find Ben but he’s dead. They also find a hotel, long abandoned – or so they think. Instead they find themselves challenged by a German-sounding stranger (Cushing).

The stranger insists they leave immediately, and tells them of a boat they can use to get off the island. In the meantime, Dobbs is killed, and his body discovered by Rose. Seeking answers, the group confront the stranger, who tells them of a secret experiment that the Nazis carried out during World War II, an experiment to create a ruthless super-soldier. The result was a soldier not living and not dead, and too difficult to control. When the war ended, the stranger, an SS Commander, was charged with disposing of the super-soldiers under his command, and so he sunk their ship. But now they have returned, and will continue to kill everyone they encounter. As far as getting off the island is concerned, avoiding the Death Corps will be difficult enough, but as fear and terror take hold, those who remain alive begin to fight amongst themselves…

If it’s a gore-soaked, ripped-out entrails kind of zombie movie that you’re after, then be warned: Shock Waves is not the movie for you. In fact, this is possibly the first and only post-1968 zombie movie where not even a single drop of blood is spilt. Instead, director Wiederhorn (making his first feature), and co-writer John Kent Harrison concentrate on creating an unnerving, atmospheric chiller-thriller that does its best to be macabre rather than gory, and which largely succeeds in its aim. There’s something to be said for any horror movie that eschews blood and gore in its efforts to make viewers feel unnerved and uncomfortable, and though the movie suffers due to genre-standard scenes where the characters run from place to place without actually getting anywhere, the scenes that involve the implacable zombie Nazis have a certain frisson about them. At one point they emerge from the surf, one by one, and stand as if waiting for a signal only they can hear; it’s genuinely creepy.

Wiederhorn is to be congratulated on being so constrained, and relying on menace and a febrile atmosphere to accentuate the occasional shocks. He’s helped by the choice of location, which isn’t an island at all, but several sites in Florida, including an area of swampland that the characters are forced to take flight and stumble through time and again as they try and escape, but though all that running about quite aimlessly seems to be just a way of padding out the running time, like all swampland, it has an unpleasant, threatening vibe that slowly makes itself felt the longer everyone crashes around it. Wiederhorn and DoP Reuben Trane do well to create such a hostile, potentially deadly environment… and that’s without the zombies. Also, there are times, notably at the beginning when the sky turns red, that the movie feels like it’s heading into full-on Twilight Zone territory, and these moments add to the growing sense of unease that the movie promotes in its opening half hour.

But while there’s plenty of effective atmosphere to be had, the movie is less successful when it comes to its motley crew of characters. Cushing and Carradine are old hands at this sort of thing and manage their roles accordingly, while Adams, in her first leading role, has little to do but pose or swim in a bikini. Ex-Flipper star Halpin fares better as the nominal hero, but everyone else is saddled with the usual horror stereotypes: the long-suffering wife, the outwardly macho/inwardly cowardly adult jock, the self-important malcontent, and the booze-fuelled worrier. Once Ben is killed off the script disposes of the rest of the characters in predictable fashion (and order), without once attempting to make them more relatable. This, however, shouldn’t be much of a surprise, as creating likeable characters never seems to be a priority in horror movies, and Shock Waves is no different. But what is notable about it is that in the context of when it was released, it dared to be different in its approach and with its “monsters”. Many more zombie Nazi movies have followed in the years since, and some can be considered better movies overall, but with apologies to The Frozen Dead, this is the grandaddy of them all, and still as diverting and sinister as it was forty years ago.

Rating: 6/10 – if you can put aside the genre conventions and occasional dumb-ass decision-making, Shock Waves is a grim, intense horror movie that makes good use of its “bad guys” and has a palpable sense of disquiet about it; still more of a curio than a cult movie, it’s better than it looks but is hamstrung by poor production values and some very choppy editing. (29/31)

It seems to be a truism that all actors and actresses only ever look forwards: to the next role, the next script, the next director in need of their talents. Ask them about past roles and a reluctance seems to set in. Oh, they’ll talk about the movies they made when they first started out, and they may even have fond memories of making some of them, but more often than not, it’s the next project that they’re really interested in. But audiences aren’t necessarily that focused, and fans even less so. They want the reassurance that said actor or actress will be making the same kind of movies that have made them famous. Familiarity breeds contentment, if you will. But what’s often interesting in an actor or actress’s career is the movies they made before they became truly famous, before they became a household name or achieved international recognition. Looking back can be just as advantageous as looking forward. After all, we know what they can do now, but what could they do back in the day?

Speak is a movie that Kristen Stewart made when she was just fourteen. It’s important to remember that, as the role of Melinda Sordino, a high school freshman who suffers a traumatic experience at a friend’s summer house party, requires her to portray a teenager you can actually identify with – and the reason she’s so good isn’t entirely because the character is well written. It’s as much a reflection on Stewart’s burgeoning talent as an actress as it is on the script by director Sharzer and co-writer Annie Young Frisbie (and itself an adaptation of the award-winning novel of the same name by Laurie Halse Anderson). Returning to school after the summer hiatus, Melinda finds herself ostracised by her friends, and treated like a pariah. The reason? At the party, Melinda called 911 but failed to tell the police why she was calling. However, the police traced her call and attended, prompting everyone to run for the hills (though why is never explained). Now, Melinda is regarded as a “squealer”.

With her best friend, Rachel (pronounced Rachelle) (Hirsh), ignoring her, and most of the other pupils whispering about her and giving her pointed looks, Melinda finds herself developing unexpected friendships with two fellow students, newbie Heather (Siko), and Melinda’s biology lab partner, Dave (Angarano). She also receives the help and support of her art teacher, Mr Freeman (Zahn), who encourages her to explore her feelings through an assignment he sets her. But still she struggles to deal with what happened to her at the party, something she’s told no one about, and something that stops her from trying to regain the friendships she used to have. As the school year progresses she begins to grow more confident in herself, and by its end has reached the conclusion that she needs to tell someone, anyone, about what happened to her. At first she wants to tell a stranger, but realises that there is only one person she should talk to. However, that person is Rachel, and what Melinda has to tell her may end their friendship for good.

Whatever your feelings about Kristen Stewart as an actress, it’s safe to say that the role of Bella in the Twilight saga was a game changer, and since that franchise ended in 2012, Stewart has made some eclectic choices and chosen a variety of roles and appeared in a variety of genres in order to escape being typecast as the somewhat dour heroine who rarely gets to smile. It was a straitjacket role, and there were times when Stewart seemed unable to give the role more than what was in the script. There are no such problems in Speak, a movie that looks at peer pressure in a compassionate, intelligent way, and how the devastating effects of a terrible experience can express themselves in ways that are positive and of benefit to the person concerned. Melinda’s ordeal is shown fairly early on, allowing the audience to sympathise with her and feel angry on her behalf. Of course, Melinda is still trying to deal with it all in her own way, and she seeks to withdraw from everyone while at the same time wishing everything could return to normal. Stewart highlights this dochotomy with an assurance that belies her age, and as Melinda’s emotions tug her this way and that, Stewart never loses sight of the different kinds of pain that she’s feeling, even as time goes on.

With Stewart giving such an impressive portrayal, it’s a shame that too much else stands out in poor relief. Melinda’s parents (Perkins, Sweeney) are too self-involved to even realise that their daughter is going through a bad time (even Melinda’s drawing lines on her lips in lieu of stitches is dismissed out of hand), and Burke’s racist history teacher bullies her in worse fashion than her friends (and gets away with it). And despite a good performance from Zahn, his freewheeling, rebellious art teacher feels contrived and/or stereotypical depending on the scene. But the main issue that may disappoint viewers is the idea that Melinda will spend much of the movie not speaking as a way of protesting what has, and is, happening to her. She even wonders how long it would take people to notice if she did. But in the end, she stays mute for two scenes and that is it for that idea. What could have made the movie more engrossing and challenging, instead is referenced on occasion and treated as a temporary affectation rather than a defined way of rebelling. At one point, Melinda is asked why a revolutionary is only as good as his or her analysis; she replies that you should know what you stand for, and not just what you’re against. This arrives too late to push the movie in a more dramatic direction, because even then Melinda’s avowal of this doesn’t mean that she’s any better equipped to deal with things or make a personal stand, just more determined to face up to them.

Having the action take place over a school year (with continual references to the holidays/special dates in order for the viewer to keep track of the time elapsing) means the movie is very episodic in nature, and as a result, it’s unable to maintain dramatic traction. Sharzer, whose sole feature credit this is so far, makes no effort to overcome this, leaving the viewer to wonder just what needs to happen to make Melinda start dealing with what happened to her. And too much of what does happen feels like it’s been lifted wholesale from other teen dramas, from the internal logic to the secondary characters to the way in which various subplots are left hanging as if waiting to be included in an extended director’s cut. It wouldn’t be fair to say that Speak is mostly shallow, but it doesn’t always reach the heights that Anderson’s novel attains, and its TV Movie of the Week veneer doesn’t help either. A bold choice, then, but one that lets down its source material, and in the process, its audience.

Rating: 6/10 – there’s a really great movie to be made from Anderson’s novel but sadly, Speak is only a middling effort that’s as good as it is thanks to Stewart’s perceptive, intuitive performance; engaging enough, and with a dry sense of humour that’s allowed to flourish from time to time, it’s a movie that has no trouble drawing in the viewer, but which then has to work extra hard to keep them interested, something that’s not quite so easily done. (28/31)

The career of writer/director Nicole Holofcener has been an interesting and successful one, with plenty of plaudits for her movies, and healthy box office returns. She makes movies that rely on a sense of realism that you don’t see too often in other, similar-minded indie movies, and thanks to Holofcener having hired Catherine Keener for every feature that she’s made, she’s regarded as someone who makes chick flicks. Chick flicks that are intelligent and character-driven, but still… chick flicks. When the producers of Enough Said approached Holofcener with an offer to produce her next movie, they had one proviso: it had to be more mainstream than her previous movies. Holofcener rose to this somewhat insensitive challenge, and in doing so, made her most accessible, and most enjoyable movie to date.

The movie’s central character is a middle-aged, ten-year divorced masseuse called Eva (Louis-Dreyfus). She has a teenage daughter, Ellen (Fairaway), who’s about to leave home to go to college, and she’s not seeking a new partner or husband or significant other. At a party she attends with her friends, Sarah and Will (Collette, Falcone), she meets Marianne (Keener), a poet, and the two hit it off. Later on, Eva tells Sarah and Will there isn’t a single man there that she’s attracted to. Until she’s introduced to Albert (Gandolfini), that is. Within a day or two, Eva has been contacted by Marianne who wants a massage, and she learns from Sarah that Albert has asked for her number. Eva and Albert arrange to have dinner together, and the evening is a success. She begins a relationship with Albert, while at the same time she learns about Marianne’s failed marriage to a man who always pushed the onions in guacamole off to the side of the bowl before eating it. Marianne remains hyper-critical of her ex-husband, and tells Eva more and more about his “digusting habits”.

Soon, Eva begins to put two and two together, and realises that Albert is the ex-husband that Marianne disparages so much. But instead of revealing her connection to both of them – she and Marianne have become friends – Eva keeps quiet, but allows Marianne’s complaints about Albert to colour her judgment about him and their relationship. At a dinner party with Sarah and Will, Eva makes embarrassing comments about Albert’s weight, all of which lead to him asking her the question, why did it seem like he’d spent the evening with his ex-wife? Eva has no answer for her behaviour, and their relationship cools a little. It’s only when Eva finds herself at Marianne’s place and her daughter, Tess (Hewson) (who Eva has already met on a lunch date with Albert), reveals the truth about her relationship with Albert, that things come to a head. But will Albert be as forgiving of Eva as she needs him to be?

It isn’t long before Enough Said begins to exert a sincere and yet powerful fascination on the viewer, as the wit and perspicacity of Holofcener’s script begins to take hold and for once – for once – it becomes clear that this will be a movie where the characters are entirely recognisable, and where the dialogue they voice has the freshness and the vitality of everyday speech. This isn’t a movie where characters get to expound on how they feel at length, or say pithy, clever remarks that perfectly encapsulate their emotions or sum up their situation. Instead this is a movie where the central character allows their built-in neuroses and their lack of confidence in a new relationship to undermine the happiness they’re building up, and does so in a way that’s entirely regrettable but also entirely human. Holofcener based her script on some of her own experiences as a divorced, middle-aged mother of two, and with Enough Said she’s crafted a knowing, sympathetic tale that carries with it an emotional heft and a low-key, semi-jaundiced view of starting afresh when all you can focus on is the possibility of past mistakes repeating themselves.

When we first meet Eva she’s stuck in a rut of her own choosing. Ten years after her divorce she’s resigned herself, deliberately, to being a parent and a masseuse and a friend, all roles that involve being of service to others. Albert’s arrival in her life throws all that up in the air, and Holofcener’s script, aided by a shrewd performance from Louis-Dreyfus, highlights just how much his presence rattles her, even while it’s the best thing that’s happened to her in years. Eva’s confidence is further undermined by Marianne’s descriptions of Albert as the less-than-perfect husband, and with a little knowledge comes great doubt as Eva allows herself to be swept up in the possibility that her relationship with Albert will be an echo of his marriage to Marianne. It all leads to Eva sabotaging their affair and endangering the happiness she hasn’t had for so long. And Louis-Dreyfus makes it all so plausible, thanks to some detailed shading in her performance, and a willingness to risk making Eva appear unsympathetic.

The role of Albert was of course Gandolfini’s last screen portrayal, and it’s a pleasure to watch his performance, one that’s relaxed and where he’s clearly enjoying the opportunity to shrug off his bad guy image and play a gentler, more vulnerable kind of character. He and Louis-Dreyfus have an easy-going chemistry together, and though Holofcener’s script is full of naturalistic, convincing dialogue, it’s the moments where they’re improvising that provide some of the movie’s more memorable (and quotable) exchanges. Elsewhere, the bickering between Sarah and Will will be familiar to anyone who’s been in a long-term relationship, though Eva’s unofficial “adoption” of Chloe occasionally stretches Holofcener’s carefully crafted credibility. There are also minor themes relating to alienation between a parent and a child, peer pressure amongst teenagers, and undisguised snobbery, all of which have their moments and all of which add to the rich texture of Holofcener’s story. But it’s the relationship between Eva and Albert that works best of all, because it’s relatable, it’s sensitively handled, and it’s the kind of middle-aged romance that rarely turns up on our screens, and rarely with such vivid, impressive authority.

Rating: 9/10 – a beautifully written tale of love under unnecessary pressure, Enough Said is insightful, vital, immensely satisfying, and features two superb performances from Louis-Dreyfus and Gandolfini; that said, Holofcener is the real star here, and it’s a shame that there haven’t been any other producers banging on her door with the same enthusiasm since, especially as this movie is, so far at least, the very talented writer/director’s finest work to date. (27/31)

Some movies catch you by surprise, literally as you’re watching them. Sometimes it’s like a switch going on inside your head, a moment when everything suddenly falls into place, or is lit up like the night sky at a fireworks party. Everything about what you’re seeing and hearing now makes perfect sense, and everything continues in that same vein, rewarding you more and more and more. Short Term 12 is one of those movies, a small-scale, low budget feature expanded by its writer/director, Destin Daniel Cretton, from his 2009 short movie of the same name. It begins simply enough at a group home for troubled teenagers, with new member of staff, Nate (Malek), being regaled on his first day at work with a story that involves a runaway teen, a support worker, and an unfortunate bowel problem. It’s a funny story, well told by the support worker himself, Mason (Gallagher Jr), but interrupted by an attempt at escaping by one of the children.

As the day progresses we’re introduced to the home’s facilitator, Jack (Turner), who advises another of the support workers, Grace (Larson) that a new girl, Jayden (Dever), will be coming to stay for a while. Grace already has plenty of children to look after at the home, from nearly eighteen year old and ready to leave Marcus (Stanfield), to the would-be escapee, Sammy (Calloway). Away from the home she and Mason are in a relationship, but Grace has recently discovered that she’s pregnant, something she hasn’t told him or anyone else. As she deals with that issue, Jayden’s arrival and her background cause Grace to assess her own past, something that she hasn’t done for some time (she and Jayden share similarities in behaviour and the emotional trauma they’ve experienced). She and Jayden start to get to know each other, but it’s not all plain sailing.

Grace eventually tells Mason that she’s pregnant, and though he’s initially shocked, he’s pleased as well, and at a party to honour Mason’s foster parents he asks Grace to marry him. She accepts, but the next day her happiness is deflated by news relating to her father. The news upsets her, but not as much as the news that the previous night, Jayden was collected by her father and won’t be returning. She berates her boss and nearly loses her job over it. Things become even worse when one of the children tries to commit suicide. With everything piling on top of her, Grace becomes withdrawn and uncommunicative with Mason, and tells him she can’t marry him or have his child. But hope comes in an unexpected form, as Grace makes one last effort to help Jayden, and by extension, herself as well.

A movie about the staff and children at a group care home that could have turned out to be mawkish, unconvincing, and trite, instead is sincere, moving, and pleasantly unsentimental. Based on writer/director Cretton’s own experiences working at a group facility for teenagers for two years, Short Term 12 (the name of the home) is a marvel of concise, effective storytelling, restrained yet emotive direction, and features a clutch of heartfelt, honest performances. It’s a movie that avoids the cliché trap with ease, and never once talks down to its audience or undermines its characters by making their issues and problems stereotypical or sensational. From Sammy’s borderline autism to the abuse Jayden is subject to, each child is given a background and a history that informs their behaviour and neutralises any notion that their actions aren’t credible. Cretton found most of the children through open casting calls (Stansfield is the only returnee from the 2009 version), and it’s a tribute to the casting team of Kerry Barden, Rich Delia and Paul Schnee that they were able to find so many children with little or no acting experience who were able to portray these characters in such a realistic manner.

But ultimately, and with no disrespect to Gallagher Jr or Dever, who both put in exemplary work, this is Larson’s movie, pure and simple. She is simply magnificent in her first leading role, imbuing Grace with a caring, resilient nature that’s slowly eroded by the overwhelming feelings that she tries so hard to avoid or ignore, feelings that are brought to the fore by becoming pregnant and meeting Jayden. Larson offers a performance that is never less than truthful, and which is fearless in presenting the emotional devastation that Grace experiences, and the pain that keeps her from enjoying any happiness beyond helping the children at the home. And as Larson explores the depths of Grace’s increasingly dissociative behaviour, she also ensures that the lifeline offered to her by helping Jayden isn’t taken up for purely selfish reasons but because Grace genuinely needs and wants to help others like her. Just the various degrees of subtlety that Larson employs is impressive enough, but she also transforms herself physically, turning in on herself as things get worse for Grace and her survivor’s guilt begins to gnaw at her. She’s aided by Cretton’s decision to frame her in close up for much of the movie, so that we get to see in detail the effect everything is having on her.

Making only his second feature, Cretton shows an assurance and a confidence in the material that some directors who’ve been making movies for far longer never achieve. In conjunction with DoP Brett Pawlak, Cretton uses a hand-held camera to tremendous effect, following his characters around as they peer into rooms and travel down hallways and gather together at break times to shoot the breeze and reestablish some sense of normalcy (if that’s at all possible) in the face of days where they’re run ragged by the demands of both the chidren and the system they’re stuck with. Cretton is clever enough not to criticise the system and its failings directly, either in relation to the staff or the children, but he does throw in some well aimed barbs that hit home with stunning accuracy. Also, he takes the issue of parental abuse and makes sure that there is no attempt to understand or condone such abuse, or to put it into a context that might offer an excuse for it. There are broader issues here that could have been addressed, but Cretton leaves them be in order to concentrate on the terrible trials endured on a daily basis by a still traumatised young woman and a devalued teenager. And it’s the best decision he could have made by far.

Rating: 8/10 – a small miracle of a movie that stumbles only once or twice in its search for emotional and social verisimilitude, Short Term 12 is impressive in a restrained, deliberate way, but it’s also one of the most emotionally honest movies seen in recent years; with an incredible performance by Larson, and the kind of intuitive screenplay that only comes along once in a while, this is a dazzlingly simple yet powerful movie that lingers in the mind long after you’ve seen it. (26/31)

There are some movies that come along and you immediately think: shameless cash-in. Or just: really? Some movies try to be smart and come at a franchise from a different angle, seeking to retain the original fanbase but at the same time giving them something newer, something related but not quite as familiar. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is one such movie, an attempt by J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. to squeeze another series of movies out of the Potterverse, and justifying doing so by setting it in the 1920’s (1926 to be precise). Add the fact that what was once meant to be a trilogy will now be a quintet, and you should have a pretty good idea of the motivation in making this new series in the first place.

Which is understandable on a business/financial level, but not on an artistic or creative one. Warner Bros and J.K. Rowling are entitled to make whatever movies they like, but where the Harry Potter saga was clearly that: a saga with an over-arching plot and main storyline, Fantastic Beasts… looks and feels very much like a stand-alone movie that Rowling et al hoped would be successful enough to warrant further entries. Well, financially, it has been – $814,037,575 according to boxofficemojo – but on closer inspection, there are problems that no amount of magical skill can deal with. Partly because of Rowling’s script (her first), and partly because of Yates’ direction. Both lack the credibility needed to make the movie appear better than it is. Rowling knows her wizarding world but this time around she doesn’t have as compelling a story to tell as she did with Harry Potter.

One of the problems with Rowling’s approach is the character of Newt Scamander (Redmayne), a protege of a certain future headmaster of Hogwarts (“Now… what makes Albus Dumbledore… so fond of you?”). Newt is possibly the most under-developed character in the entire Potterverse. As played by Redmayne he’s a closed book that the viewer never gets to know or appreciate, and Rowling never attempts to make him anything other than a floppy-fringed creature collector with all the social skills of a man in a coma. Redmayne has no chance against this, and he ambles and mumbles his way through the movie giving a performance that he looks and feels uncomfortable with. Let’s hope that future installments give us the chance to get to know him better, otherwise he’s going to remain a pedantic nerd whose dialogue consists largely of exposition.

Then there’s the plot itself, which involves a multitude of characters, all of whom waltz around each other in inter-connected ways that don’t add up and which don’t further the nonsensical narrative in any convincing way. We’re alerted at the start to a wizard-gone-bad called Gellert Grindelwald (Depp). Forewarned of his evil nature we wait patiently for him to appear properly only to find that he’s not part of the storyline (at least not in the way we expect). Instead we’re prodded back and forth between Newt and MACUSA (Magical Congress of the United States of America) agent Tina Goldstein (Waterston), or eavesdrop on the lives of the Barebone family, whose matriarch, the forever-adopting Mary Lou (Morton), is head of the New Salem Philanthropic Society, a group seeking to expose the wizarding world for no particular reason other than that’s the motive Rowling gives them for existing. There’s a sub-plot involving a young child that may or may not be the source of a devastating magical creature called an Obscurus (of which naturally, Newt has some experience), and there’s a No-Maj (US slang for Muggle), would-be baker Jacob Kowalski (Fogler), who gets involved thanks to an old-fashioned suitcase switch that only happens in the movies.

There’s more – way more – with Rowling trying to cram in enough incidents for the planned series as a whole, but mostly the movie revolves around Newt’s search for some of the beasts in the title, the ones who manage to escape the suitcase he keeps them in. All these things and again, way more, serve only to make the movie a piecemeal adventure that flits from scene to scene in its attempts to tell a coherent, and more importantly, interesting story. Too much happens for reasons beyond the skill of Rowling to explain, and while a handful of the performances rise above the constraints of the script – Fogler’s, Sudol as Tina’s Legilimens sister Queenie, Miller as the tortured Clarence Barebone – they aren’t enough to rescue the movie as a whole.

Which leads us to Yates, whose direction isn’t as bold or as confident as it was with Harry Potter parts five through eight (and who is attached to the rest of this series). Here, Yates is clearly a director for hire, and if he had any input into the tone or feel of the movie then it looks to have been dismissed with a wave of Rowling’s pen. The movie lacks for energy in its many action scenes, and any attempts at corralling the wayward script is lost in a welter of special effects, many of which aren’t that impressive (a common fault with movies set in the Potterverse). Yates’ skill as a director is missing here and scenes that should have an emotional impact pass by as blandly as the rest. Ultimately what’s missing is the sense of awe and wonder the audience should be experiencing at seeing these fantastic beasts, and from being allowed to explore this new/old (you decide) era in wizarding history. That the movie never achieves this is disappointing, and doesn’t bode well for the remaining four movies coming our way.

Rating: 5/10 – not the most auspicious of starts to a franchise, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is by-the-numbers moviemaking that doesn’t make the most of its fantasy trappings or its Twenties New York setting (it literally could have been set anywhere and it wouldn’t have made a difference to the story or the characters); Rowling shoehorns in as much as she can but can’t quite manage to make any of it as exciting or significant as she did with the boy wizard, all of which leaves the movie looking and sounding like a cynical exercise in milking further dividends from a previously successful franchise. (25/31)

Let’s get this out of the way first of all – thank God (or whichever deity you choose) for Hayao Miyazaki. In a world full of pretenders and puffed-up egos, the man is an unassailable genius. From Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986), all the way through to his swansong, The Wind Rises (2013), Miyazaki has been responsible for providing audiences around the world with a succession of beautifully crafted, emotionally resonant animated movies that have been a feast for the eyes and a balm to the heart. And Porco Rosso (literally ‘crimson pig’) sits firmly within the pantheon of Miyazaki’s career as a director (and just as firmly as Fio’s behind in Porco Rosso’s rebuilt plane).

The movie is another of Miyazaki’s grounded fantasies, with the title character (Moriyama) a veteran fighter pilot from World War I who now acts as an aerial bounty hunter, tracking down and putting out of business so-called air pirates operating above the Adriatic Sea. But Porco isn’t just a bounty hunter, he’s also an anthropomorphic pig, the victim of a curse that has no apparent cure. When Porco isn’t chasing down air pirates and saving groups of school children (a common occurrence it seems), he divides his time between the tiny island he uses as his base, and the Hotel Adriano, which is owned and run by the widow of one of his war-time co-pilots, Madame Gina (Katô) (she has feelings for Porco but he’s blissfully unaware of them). The hotel is also the meeting place for the leaders of the various air pirate gangs; they’ve arranged for a famous American flyer, Donald Curtis (Ōtsuka), to take on and defeat Porco when he next attempts to stop them from robbing a ship. The confrontation takes place as planned, but Porco’s plane – which has seen better days – lets him down and he’s forced to give Curtis the impression that he’s gone to a watery grave. In time, Porco returns to the European mainland, and travels to Milan in order to get his plane repaired.

Being careful to keep a low profile – Porco is a wanted pig in Italy – he arrives at the workshop of his old friend and mechanic, Piccolo (Katsura Vi). He’s surprised to learn that Piccolo’s sons have left to find work elsewhere, and his old friend only has his seventeen-year-old granddaughter, Fio (Okamura) to help him. Against his initial reservations he agrees to let Fio redesign his plane, but she proves to have some excellent ideas, all of which go to make Porco’s plane faster and more robust in the air. With the Italian secret police closing in on him, Porco makes to leave, only to find Fio determined to go with him as “a hostage”. They evade the secret police and arrive back at the Hotel Adriano only to be accosted by the air pirates who threaten to destroy Porco’s plane and kill him. But Fio intervenes and shames them into accepting a duel between Porco and Curtis instead. If Porco wins, Curtis must make good on the debts Porco owes Piccolo; if Curtis wins though, Fio will agree to marry him…

If Porco Rosso looks and feels as if Miyazaki has a stronger attachment to this project than usual, then the fact that it’s an adaptation of a three-part watercolour manga, The Age of the Flying Boat, by Miyazaki himself might offer a clue as to the reason why. Miyazaki’s distrust of modern technology is evident in both the movie’s setting and the way in which Porco keeps faith with his plane – and despite its obvious failings in the movie’s opening third. And when his plane is redesigned by Fio, the materials that are used are in keeping with the original construction (only the engine could be considered an “upgrade”). All this is in keeping with Miyazaki’s environmentalist beliefs as well as his reoccurring notions of family, here represented by Piccolo’s workforce all being female relatives of his whose skills are required because the menfolk are absent. It’s these deft touches that add depth to the material, much of which is an ode to an earlier, simpler age, and Miyazaki, working from his own script, ensures there’s an added sense of poignancy in relation to a future where everything will change.

In many ways, Porco Rosso is perhaps the closest Miyazaki has gotten to making a Western. Porco is the lone gunslinger, quicker on the draw than anyone else, while Curtis is the young upstart looking to make a name for himself by bringing down the more experienced gunfighter. The Hotel Adriano doubles for a saloon, the air pirates are rustlers and bandits who rob stagecoaches, and Fio is the plucky young girl a la Mattie Ross in True Grit (1969). Further references can be made, and it’s fun to spot them as the movie zips along merrily in such good-natured fashion that finding fault with it soon proves to be a task of Herculean proportions. It’s an infectiously enjoyable movie, funny in a variety of ways and always aiming to please, always looking for new and different ways to surprise the viewer and improve their viewing experience. That it succeeds, and with such ease, is a testament to Miyazaki’s innate ability to tell a good story, and his unwavering commitment to the movies he makes (or since his retirement in 2013, made).

This being a Studio Ghibli movie, the animation is suitably and predictably impressive, with sharp, clean lines; bright, vibrant colours; superb lighting effects; and wonderfully expressive characters. Some scenes have a painterly effect, as if you’re looking at a canvas in a museum of art, and there’s an incredible sense of space and movement that Miyazaki and his team pull off as it was the easiest thing in the world (which it probably isn’t). This is 2D animation at its best: richly detailed, painstakingly assembled, and often beautiful to watch or look at. With an amusing screenplay that doesn’t ignore or gloss over the inherent drama of Porco’s situation (particularly the dream-like sequence where he reveals how he came to be a pig), or aspects such as Madame Gina’s unrequited love for him, the movie flows as easily and as confidently as the waves depicted on screen.

Rating: 9/10 – an unabashed gem of a movie, Porco Rosso does what all truly great animated movies do: it makes you forget you’re watching an animated movie; full of memorable moments (too many to mention here at least), it’s a movie that contains palpable senses of mischief and wonder in its storytelling, and makes you wish that Miyazaki’s planned sequel, Porco Rosso: The Last Sortie, could have been made before he decided to retire from making features. (24/31)

What if you had the chance to relive the love you once had but lost? What if Fate afforded you the opportunity to continue living the romantic life you’d taken for granted? And what if that romantic life, or a newer version of it at least, wasn’t intrinsically healthy, but you had to embrace it, or lose more of yourself than you could ever realise? What would you do? Would you still try for happiness under those circumstances, or would you take a step back, avoid committing yourself, let Life take you in another direction? Or would the mere contemplation of taking a different, more appropriate path, persuade you to try for that renewed happiness? And if you did commit yourself to revisiting a once treasured relationship, how would that decision make you feel, and what would be the emotional toll of such a decision?

These are all questions asked by The Face of Love, a romantic drama that centres around the grief experienced by Nikki Lostrom (Bening) after the death of her husband, Garret (Harris), after thirty years of marriage. Five years on from his unexpected death from drowning while on holiday in Mexico, Nikki is still grieving, still devoted to his memory, still living in the house he built for her, and still wishing he was alive. She has become resigned to being on her own; the only “man” in her life is an old friend of Garret’s called Roger (Williams) who uses her pool (Garret used to swim, and Roger’s using their pool is another way of retaining a connection with her late husband). A random trip to an art gallery she and Garret used to visit leads to a fateful discovery: a man (Harris) who looks exactly like Garret, sitting on a bench. Nikki is shocked, but mostly energised by the possibility that he might serve as a replacement for Garret, a döppelganger she can pretend is her dead husband come back to life.

She discovers the man’s name is Tom Young, and that he’s an art professor at a local college. An attempt to enrol in one of his classes backfires, partly because it’s already halfway through the semester, and partly because she becomes overwhelmed. But she engineers another “chance” meeting, and she hires Tom as a private art tutor. From there they begin a relationship, one that becomes more and more serious, and one that she hides from Roger, and her daughter, Summer (Weixler). She also hides the truth about Tom’s uncanny resemblance to Garret, knowing instinctively that no one else will understand the need she has to keep him in her life. As time goes on, Tom falls in love with Nikki, while her obsession with Garret threatens to undermine the love she feels for Tom. As she strives – and fails – to keep her relationship with Tom from developing into a full-blown obsession, Summer meets Tom accidentally and doesn’t react well to his presence, while a trip to Mexico doesn’t go as Nikki planned either…

When it comes to depicting grief, the movies tend to go for big, emotionally devastating scenes that are constructed with the express desire of wringing out the audience and leaving them feeling hollow inside – in a good way, of course. Pixar took this idea to the nth degree with the opening montage in Up (2009), a sequence so perfectly judged and executed that it can instil tears no matter how many times you see it. But Arie Posin’s second feature after the quirky, indie-flavoured The Chumscrubber (2005), isn’t interested in grand emotional gestures but quietly devastating ones instead. Nikki’s grief is compounded by her inability to deal with being a widow, and the gloomy knowledge that she is on her own again after thirty years. She works, she potters around at home, she does her best to support her daughter who has her own relationship issues, but still she lacks purpose. She trades on her memories to keep her going, and every day is the same: another day where she misses Garret fiercely.

Posin and co-screenwriter Matthew McDuffie are keen to show the dilemma that Nikki faces when she sees Tom for the first time. Her initial shock soon gives way to desire, a physical craving to have Garret’s double in her life, to give her back the purpose she lacks, and to allow herself to feel whole once more. Nikki experiences a number of complex, emotional reactions to the possibility of spending more time with “Garret”, and as her desire descends slowly into obsession (at one point it becomes clear she’d rather have Tom in her life than her own daughter), the viewer is forced to watch Nikki deny her own grief and clutch at the hope of a relationship she knows in her heart can’t last. She’s both aware of, and in denial of, the feelings that are trapping her in an ever increasing spiral of deceit. With all this emotional upheaval going on it’s a good job that Bening was chosen for the role, as she is nothing short of incredible, making Nikki both horrifying and sympathetic at the same time, a monstrous figure borne of overwhelming selfishness and unseemly desire.

It’s not too far off to say that Nikki is psychologically abusive, to herself and to Tom, and the script effectively explores the nature of that abuse and its effect on everyone concerned. Harris is solid and dependable as Tom, and more ebullient as the Garret we see in flashbacks. As he becomes more and more suspicious of Nikki’s need for him, we witness Tom’s own vulnerability from being alone, and the personal importance his romance with Nikki takes on. But while the central relationship builds on an achingly effective sense of co-dependency, elsewhere the narrative isn’t as confident or compelling. Secondary characters such as Williams’ romantically hopeful friend, and Weixler’s bright but narratively redundant daughter are given short shrift by the script and pop up only when said script remembers to include them (though not always in a way that advances the story or plot). Posin the director concentrates on Nikki almost to the exclusion of everything else, and while this does allow Bening to give another of her exemplary performances, it doesn’t help that many scenes look and feel contrived, and the narrative suffers any time Nikki avoids telling Tom the truth about why she’s seeing him. Posin never really finds a solution for these problems, and they end up harming the movie, making it seem unnecessarily superficial in places, and yet far more successful as a study in the mechanics of obsessive need. A detailed, somewhat complex movie then, but undermined by its clumsy structure and random attempts to broaden the narrative.

Rating: 7/10 – Bening is the main attraction here, riveting and plausible in equal measure, and giving The Face of Love such a boost it’s hard to envision the movie without her; narrative problems aside, this is still a movie that packs an emotional wallop in places, and which shows that romantic dramas aren’t exclusively the domain of twentysomethings or disaffected teenagers. (23/31)

How many times does it happen? Just when you think you’ve seen all but the most obscure entries in an actor or actress’s filmography, then up pops a movie that elicits a blank-faced response and mutterings along the line of, “No, I’ve seen it… I must have seen it”. The Card is such a movie, an outing for Alec Guinness that somehow slipped through the cracks of the last forty years. Oh, the shame! The horror! The – okay, that’s enough hysterical melodrama. There’s an upside to this kind of situation, though, a silver lining in the dark cloud of feature blindness, and that’s the joy at discovering there’s still a movie starring a favourite actor or actress that you haven’t seen, a movie to savour at a point when you thought there wouldn’t be any more movies to catch up on. Of all the movies in this month’s strand, this has provided the most pleasure in terms of its being “discovered”.

It’s an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Arnold Bennett, and tells the tale of an ambitious young man called Edward Henry Machin (Guinness), but known as Denry by his friends, family and work colleagues. Denry wants to get ahead in Life, and isn’t above a little cheating in order to further his ambitions. He forges his exam results to get into a better school, and when he’s a young man he uses a lost wallet to get his foot in the door at the office of Herbert Duncalf (Chapman), town clerk and solicitor. One day, Denry meets the Countess of Chell (Hobson), one of Duncalf’s clients. Denry is smitten by her, and determines to win her patronage however he can. Charged by Duncalf with sending out invitations to a grand municipal ball the Countess is hosting, Denry ensures he has an invitation himself. Needing a dress suit he provides an invitation to the tailor, and needing dance lessons, he provides an invitation to his instructor, Miss Ruth Earp (Johns). At the ball, Denry accepts a challenge to dance with the Countess. He does so, and this earns him a reputation as a “card” (in other words, a “character”).

His attendance at the ball enrages Duncalf who fires him, but not before Denry spots an opportunity to work for himself. He offers his services as a rent collector to one of Duncalf’s dissatisfied clients, and quickly realises he can make money for himself by advancing loans to tenants and reaping the benefits of a profitable interest rate. His success secures him another landlord’s list of tenants, one of whom turns out to be Miss Earp. Despite her efforts to avoid paying her rent arrears, and despite Denry’s every effort to get her to do so, they find themselves engaged. On a trip to Llandudno in Wales – accompanied by Nellie Cotterill (Clark), Miss Earp’s friend and chaperone – Denry becomes aware of just how avaricious his fiancée really is (he’s had enough clues by now) and they part company. Denry returns to his home town of Bursley and starts up the Five Towns Universal Thrift Club, which allows members to buy on credit from certain shops. Using this as a platform to enhance his social standing, Denry becomes a councillor, persuades the Countess to act as patroness of the Thrift Club, gets involved with Bursley’s ailing football club, and looks ahead to running for Mayor. But who will he choose as the woman to share it all with – Miss Earp, the Countess, or young Nellie?

This was Guinness’s first outing as a romantic lead, but Guinness being Guinness he’s not the most romantic lead you’ve ever seen. Adopting a dreamy, wistful, semi-surprised look for most of the movie, Guinness does his best to look beatific even when things aren’t going entirely Denry’s way. It’s a performance full of light touches and broad brush strokes, charm and unassuming wit, with Guinness looking eternally cheerful and eternally optimistic. It’s often a carefree, overly relaxed portrayal, with Guinness opting for nonchalance instead of keen involvement, and it matches the light, frivolous nature of the material. This is a comedy, through and through, and one that’s played at just the right level – bordering on farce – by all concerned. You can reckon on the cast imbuing the characters with exactly the right mannerisms and exactly the right motivations, whether it’s Johns’ mercenary dance teacher, Chapman’s unctuous public official, or Hobson’s stately yet approachable Countess. They offer the cinematic equivalent of comfort food, and he experience of watching the movie is all the better for it.

But even though it’s an outright comedy, there are still dramatic elements that add depth to the material, such as an underlying critique of social conventions that’s dropped onto centre stage at times just to remind the audience that there’s more to the movie than laughs aplenty (even if most of those elements are steamrollered into submission by the end). Also there are moments where Denry’s plans look as if they might all tumble around him, and the movie adopts a plaintive, melancholy tone before Denry extricates himself in such a way that he comes out ahead (and make no mistake, Eric Ambler’s screenplay is firmly behind Denry all the way). And then there are the romantic antics of Denry and Miss Earp, an adversarial relationship that somehow seems fortuitous and yet ineluctably doomed at the same time. Guinness and Johns spar with each other delightfully, and the conclusion to their Llandudno trip – “I only said Rockefeller” – is beautifully judged and executed.

What drama there is, though, is completely overwhelmed by the movie’s earnest desire to entertain its audience purely and thoroughly. This isn’t a movie that will have you mulling over its finer points for weeks afterwards, nor is it a movie where its parochial backdrop serves as anything more than just that, a backdrop for the rags to riches tale of Denry’s success as a social climber. It’s directed nimbly and with a keen eye by Neame for the absurdity of having a whey-faced cheat as its “hero”, and he and Guinness have created a loveable seducer to hang their story on. Buoyed by crisp cinematography by the ever-reliable Oswald Morris, and with a singsong, happy-go-lucky score by William Alwyn, this is marvellous entertainment that doesn’t need to be anything more than it is: a silly, giddy, unpretentious piece of fun.

Rating: 8/10 – Guinness is on fine form (as always), and though he’ll never convince as a romantic lead, he does convince as a conniver and an opportunist, and retains a likeability that’s hard to ignore; easy-going and happy to be nothing more than a bit of fluff to be enjoyed for what it is, The Card is a genuinely cheerful experience, and proof yet again that they don’t make ’em like that anymore. (22/31)

When you think about it, there are hundreds of thousands of English language movies to choose from, with thousands more being added each year. But there are even more foreign language movies, and picking one to watch can be daunting. Do you keep it safe by seeing foreign language movies that are awards winners, such as Toni Erdmann (2016), or do you opt for pot luck and take a corresponding chance? Taking the second option can be a reward in itself, and if you choose to see The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell, an adaptation of the novella, The Double Death of Quincas Water-Bray (1959) by Jorge Amado, then that choice will definitely be well made.

The plot concerns Quincas Wateryell (José), an old man whose friends have planned a surprise birthday party for him. But Quincas goes and does something unexpected: he misses the party and promptly dies (his first death). His body is found the next morning, and his family – his daughter Vanda (Ximenes), and son-in-law Leonardo (Brichta) – are contacted. While the news of her father’s death is obviously upsetting, there is another reason why the news is unwelcome: Quincas isn’t his real name, it’s Joaquim Soares da Cunha, and he disgraced his family by walking out on them to become a vagabond alcoholic. Having changed his name, only a handful of people are aware of his connection to Vanda, and she wants to keep it that way. Early preparations for the funeral are made, and some of Quincas’ friends – Curió (Menezes), Pé de Vento (Miranda), Pastinha (Bauraqui), and Cabo Martim (Santos) – hold a late night vigil over Quincas’ corpse.

The four men reminisce about the times they spent with Quincas, and they decide to give him what they regard as a proper send off: they take him for one last jaunt through town, going to the places they used to frequent, and treat it all as one big farewell party. Their intentions are simple, and the rest of the people who knew Quincas all join in, including his “girlfriend”, a club singer called Manuela (Severo). However, their having taken Quincas’ body is soon discovered, and the police become involved. It’s not long before they’re arrested and taken into custody, along with Quincas’ body. A hastily put together diversion allows the four friends (and Quincas) to escape from the police station, and they head for the docks where they plan to take him for one last boat trip. But a storm intervenes, and while the four friends, and Manuela, struggle to keep themselves afloat, Quincas’ final resting place suddenly seems more likely to be a watery one than one underground.

When Amado’s novella was first published, it was well received due to its indictment of Brazil’s class-ridden society, and The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell retains much of that original recrimination, though it becomes more of a comedic issue than a dramatic one. Vanda receives the news of her father’s death while in the company of two friends, and at first her shock is a natural reaction to such unexpected news. But it’s not long before she perceives her social standing as being under threat, and she takes steps to ensure her father, Joaquim, and Quincas, aren’t connected in any way. The same is true of her husband, Leonardo, who supports the fabrication that he ran off with the daughter of an Italian Comendatore and hasn’t been seen since. This stands him in good stead at work as well, with his colleagues taking more notice of him than before. Machado, working from his own script, starts off by making the couple unfeeling and duplicitous, but in a comedic light, as they’re unable to hide their conflicting emotions and their behaviour borders on being inappropriate. Even when Quincas’ relationship to them becomes more and more well known, they still can’t help themselves, and resort to misplaced pride to maintain their reputation in the local community.

What’s clever about Machado’s adaptation, though, is that he doesn’t continue with this attitude, and by the movie’s end, Vanda is a completely different person, wiser perhaps, and definitely changed, and free of the social insecurities she had before. How Machado achieves this is equally clever, and psychologically quite astute. He’s helped by a terrific performance by Ximenes, who provides each step of Vanda’s character arc with convincing details and honest emotional reactions. Less successful is Leonardo’s role in everything, as the longer the movie goes on, the less he’s involved, and he disappears from the final half an hour altogether. By then, of course, the focus is on getting Quincas to the boat trip, and Machado has to sacrifice tying up some of his script’s loose ends in favour of a dramatic denouement.

Along the way though, Machado achieves a lot of mileage out of Quincas’ “night out” with his friends. Taking a peek at the social underclass in Salvador da Bahia gives the director a chance to provide a colourful glimpse into a world of tradition and superstition, and which has a pronounced indifference to more conventional social practices (as evidenced by the religious ritual that Vanda dismisses as unnecessary because her family – not Quincas it’s important to note – are Catholics). It’s a lively, expressive environment, where people wear their hearts on their sleeves, and live with a passion for life that appears to be compromised amongst the people in Vanda and Leonardo’s social circle. The cast are all equally as expressive in their roles, with good performances throughout by Messrs Bauraqui, Miranda, Menezes, and Santos, but special mention must go to José, whose portrayal of Quincas is the bedrock of the movie, and an amazing feat in itself (at first you’ll be looking to see if he twitches or blinks or can be caught breathing; don’t bother, you won’t manage it). He also provides a witty, often poignant narration that’s delivered with sincerity and charm. Rounded off by immersive yet unshowy cinematography by Toca Seabra, it’s a movie that never flags for incident, and never undervalues its characters or their motives.

Rating: 8/10 – a vital and energetic comedy drama that tackles themes of social climbing, emotional disillusionment, and unwanted family legacies, The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell is a sturdy, engaging and ultimately winning movie that offers much for the casual viewer to enjoy; advertised more as a comedy, it has a depth to it that anchors much of the storyline, and shows that absurd moments involving a corpse don’t have to be purely a showcase for laughs. (21/31)

NOTE: There aren’t any English subtitles for the trailer below, but there shouldn’t be any problem understanding what’s going on.

There is a song by Sparks called Talent Is an Asset. It’s a turn of a phrase to remember when watching Out of the Furnace, the second feature by Scott Cooper, because without its very talented cast, the movie would not be as good as it is, and it wouldn’t be as persuasive. Cooper has taken a spec script by Brad Inglesby (who receives a co-writing credit) – and which originally had Leonardo DiCaprio and Ridley Scott attached to it – and made a movie that alternately baffles and convinces with its plotting. It’s a movie that takes over half its running time to get to the meat of the story, and which throws in a couple of sub-plots for good measure in order to pad out said running time.

It’s a tale that begins inauspiciously, in the small town of Braddock, with steel mill worker Russell Baze (Bale) discovering that his younger brother, Iraq War veteran Rodney (Affleck), is in serious debt to local bar owner and small town criminal John Petty (Dafoe). Without telling Rodney, Russell begins paying off his debt, but an unexpected and tragic accident sees Russell sent to prison. In the meantime, Rodney returns to Iraq for another tour of duty, their terminally ill father dies, and Russell’s girlfriend, Lena (Saldana), takes up with the town sheriff, Wesley Barnes (Whitaker) without even telling him. When he eventually gets out, he soon discovers that Rodney, who is now back home for good, is taking part in illegal bare knuckle fights in order to pay off his debt to Petty. Russell challenges him to work at the steel mill instead but Rodney refuses.

Rodney compels Petty to set up one last fight, one with a big enough payout that he can clear his debt and start his life afresh. Against his better judgment, Petty arranges a fight through one of his criminal contacts, a vicious drug dealer from the Ramapo Mountains called Harlan DeGroat (Harrelson). After the fight, evidence points to DeGroat having killed Rodney and Petty, but the police are hampered by the uncooperative nature of the Ramapo community, and DeGroat never being in the same place twice. Russell decides he has to take the law into his own hands, and he goes looking for DeGroat, but has the same luck as the police. And then he hits on an idea that will bring DeGroat to him…

Out of the Furnace has two clear ambitions: to be a tough, uncompromising drama, and to provide a snapshot of rural communities along the Eastern Seaboard of America, and their daily struggles to keep their heads above water. For the most part, Cooper succeeds in making the movie tough and uncompromising, and there are several scenes that exert a morbid fascination in terms of the characters and their acceptance of the way Life makes their situations worse than they need to be. Rodney can’t see a better way out of his financial situation, and so gets regularly beaten and bruised and bloodied. Russell comes out of prison and makes only a half-hearted attempt to reconnect with Lena (an attempt that is shot down in flames in moments). And Lena rues the decision she made in leaving Russell but is in a position where she can’t back out anymore. All this makes everyone’s life that much harder, and their various predicaments are what drive the movie forward. And then Russell finds himself in another corner, the one where he feels compelled to seek revenge for what’s happened to his brother.

Decisions and consequences, then, but ones that aren’t handled that well by Cooper, and ones that follow a very prescribed pattern. A scene showing DeGroat making and injecting heroin is interspersed with shots of a SWAT team advancing on the house where DeGroat is supposed to live. Not one viewer should be surprised when the SWAT raid reveals DeGroat isn’t home and that he’s somewhere else. This scene and others play out as if we’ve never seen them before, and while familiarity can be used to a director’s advantage, here they’re just stepping stones on a path too many of us have witnessed before. Cooper also connects the dots for the viewer at almost every turn, and there’s too much unnecessary exposition propping up these scenes to make them anywhere near effective. As for the backdrop of the town’s misfortune, aside from a brief mention that the mill is expected to close, the precarious nature of people’s lives and the decline of Braddock’s infrastructure is glimpsed but receives no further exploration.

With the story following a familiar through line, and Cooper finding it difficult to make the action as urgent as it needs to be, it’s left to the cast to rescue things. Bale gives a magnetic performance as Russell, a man with a strong moral code that brooks no compromise, and he’s matched by Affleck’s tightly-wound portrayal of Rodney, an Iraq War veteran whose seen too much and uses bare knuckle fighting to punish himself for being a part of it all (an aspect of his character which is barely explored but is a more effective reason for his fighting than paying off a debt). Whitaker, Saldana, and Dafoe offer strong support, taking largely underwritten characters and fleshing them out to good effect, but it’s Harrelson who steals the movie, making DeGroat one of the scariest, and yet charismatic villains of recent years. There’s something about Harrelson playing a psychopath that always seems just right, and here the actor gives an hypnotic performance that chills and repulses at the same time. In assembling such a great cast, Cooper has been lucky in that the material has been given a massive boost thanks to their overall commitment; but if they hadn’t agreed to take part…

Rating: 5/10 – an ambitious, rural-based thriller that isn’t as muscular or compelling as its writer/director intended, Out of the Furnace suffers from a muddled structure and too many scenes that exist in isolation of each other; saved by a clutch of very good performances, it remains a movie that should have made more of its deprived-area backdrop and even more of its generic revenge-based denouement. (20/31)

John Heard was an actor who could have been a star – and briefly he was. Early on in his career, it looked as if A-list status was only a movie or two away. But it wasn’t to be, and though Heard continued to work steadily on both the big screen and on TV, he never achieved the level of fame or fortune that his skill as an actor warranted. He was sanguine about his lack of success, and in 2008 he had these very perceptive words to say about his career:

“I guess I went from being a young leading man to being just kind of a hack actor. When I came to Hollywood, I was pretty much a stage actor, and I expected everybody to be quiet. And they weren’t. They were doing their job, and you’re expected to do your job, and you’re sort of this ongoing co-existence. I was a little bit of an arrogant jerk. Now, it’s a little bit more like, ‘Okay, I realize you have to pat me down with powder every three seconds.’ And I stand there, and I’m a little more tolerant…. I think I had my time. I dropped the ball, as my father would say. I think I could have done more with my career than I did, and I sort of got sidetracked. But that’s OK, that’s all right, that’s the way it is. No sour grapes. I mean, I don’t have any regrets. Except that I could have played some bigger parts.”

Event though from the Eighties onwards he could be found quite low down on cast lists in often minor supporting roles, Heard could still infuse the characters he played with an honesty and a sincerity that often made them better roles than intended. Even in something as bad as Sharknado (2013), he was still worth watching, and he gave several other movies a boost just by being in them. Some careers don’t pan out in the way that actors expect or plan for, and even though Heard was capable of much better roles than he was given, and much better performances when given the chance, he was still an actor who could surprise an audience, as the Emmy nomination for his role as Detective Vin Makazian in The Sopranos (1999/2004) proved. However his career may be viewed now, one thing can be said with certainty: his was a talent that was never fully exploited, and that was, and continues to be, a detriment to us all.

Watching The Goob, it’s tempting to ask the question, just how many disaffected, aimless teenagers are there in the world? And following on from that question, it’s equally as tempting to ask: why is it that their mothers all seem to take up with violent, reprehensible boyfriends? Sometimes it seems that when it comes to teenagers navigating the ups and downs of trying to find their way in the world, the movies rely on too many clichés to get the story told. Cliché no 1: have the teenager sulk a lot and look miserable. Cliché no 2: make sure the teenager has very little dialogue, and that when he or she does speak, it’s in monosyllables. Cliché no 2a: and if they do speak, make sure they don’t articulate any feelings or emotions. Cliché no 3: make sure the teenager is shown walking or running or riding a bicycle or moped in a generally aimless direction (and more than once). Cliché no 4: give the teenager a chance at a meaningful relationship with a person of the opposite sex, but then ensure that something happens to ruin it. And cliché no 5: always, always, have the teenager do something that will alienate them even further.

Guy Myhill’s debut feature ticks all these boxes and more in its attempt to tell the story of Goob Taylor, a sixteen year old living in the wilds of rural Norfolk who we meet on a school bus heading home after his last day in full-time education. Home is a weather-worn diner run by his mother, Janet (Guillory), somewhere on a main road but only able to attract the custom of the local residents (which is strange, as aside from the odd building here and there, and a custom car race track, housing seems to be in very short supply). Janet and Goob have a strong, loving relationship, but recently she’s started seeing Gene (Harris), a local beet farmer and would-be race car champion who’s also a vindictive bully. Gene seems only interested in Janet for sex, while he treats Goob and his older brother, Rod (Copsey), with complete disdain. A joy ride in Gene’s race car ends in a crash that sees Rod ending up in hospital, but Goob barely suffering a scratch. This leads to Goob having to help Gene on his beet farm, holed up in a pit overnight to watch out for anyone trying to steal the crop.

The arrival of help in the form of Elliott (Kennedy), an upbeat, continually smiling young man a little older than Goob hints at a potential gay love interest, but Myhill avoids this by introducing instead a field worker called Eva (Corlett), whom Goob takes a shine to. As their relationship develops, it starts to provoke an envious response in Gene, who watches the pair from a distance, and with the intention of interfering. At a party where all the field workers are invited, Eva and one of Gene’s friends head off to play snooker but it’s not long before Gene interrupts their game in order to be alone with Eva and try his luck. When she rejects his advances he’s less than gentle in his response. Goob appears to rescue Eva and confront Gene, but whatever plan Goob has, Gene isn’t remotely aware of it, and their confrontation doesn’t go as Goob would like…

As well as the clichés listed above, there are several more that could be added. While the movie paints a melancholy tale of a life headed nowhere, literally and figuratively, this would be fine if there was any likelihood that Goob’s situation would be any different at the end of the movie from what it is at the beginning. Goob is not just stuck in the middle of nowhere, he’s stuck with no ambition and no willingness to improve his life in any meaningful way. His relationship with his mother constantly hints at being inappropriate – they play wrestle on her bed, she hugs him tightly and tells him he’ll still be her “boy” even when he’s forty-six – and she appears to gain more emotional support from him than the other way round. But while Myhill signposts this sort of thing with the appearance that it’s all relevant and will be explored later in the movie, this subplot and several others fall by the wayside with increasing frequency. The same is true of a scene where Goob discovers Gene having sex with Mary (Spearritt), a young girl who helps out in the diner. You’d be willing to bet that Goob will use this at some point to expose Gene in front of his mother, but it’s not even referred to. In The Goob, it’s surprising how many blind alleys there are lurking in the rural vastness of the Norfolk countryside.

With much of the plot lacking development, and less exploration of the characters’ states of mind than benefits the material, Myhill is rescued by Simon Tindall’s impressive cinematography, and sterling performances from Harris (convincing as always; now give this man a comedy, for God’s sake) and newcomer Walpole, whose glum demeanour and pouty stare adds to the sense of Goob’s isolation from those around him. But neither can detract from the pervading sense of familiarity that watching the movie provokes, nor the idea that Myhill has opted for style over substance in his efforts to tell Goob’s story – such as it is.

Rating: 5/10 – containing too many elements that don’t add up or are just ignored as the movie progresses, The Goob looks more persuasive than it is, and only occasionally proves as compelling as it should be; an occasion where less is just that, it’s a movie that looks good on the surface, but which tells its story without stopping to convince the audience how its main character feels about anything that’s happening to him or around him. (19/31)

In 1939, Orson Welles (Schreiber), the “boy wonder”, signed a movie contract with RKO Pictures. He was given unprecedented freedom to make whatever movie he wanted (though RKO hoped he would make a movie version of his infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast). After two attempts at making his first picture, Welles, along with old friend and writer Herman J. Mankiewicz (Malkovich) came up with the idea of making a loosely fictionalised version of the life of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst (Cromwell). Welles regarded Hearst as a hypocrite and a monster, a man richly deserving of being exposed in much the same way that Hearst’s newspapers had done to others. Welles considered he had nothing to lose by making such a movie, but before long it became something much more personal, and with a great deal of meaning for him. RKO 281 – Citizen Kane‘s production number – shows how the movie came to be made, some of the pitfalls along the way, and the pressure Hearst tried to exert in order to make the movie disappear without the public ever seeing it.

Like many an acknowledged classic, Citizen Kane didn’t just appear out of nowhere. In RKO 281, we see the genesis of both the myth and the legend, and the movie itself. After a year in Hollywood, and with nothing to show for his efforts, Welles was already being looked upon as a failure, a circumstance that didn’t bother him in the slightest, but which would spur him on to make a movie that is generally regarded as the best American movie ever made. Based in part on the documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane (1996), RKO 281 begins with Welles’ arrival in Hollywood, his fame preceeding him. Persuaded to come out there by RKO head George J. Schaefer (Scheider), Welles attends a dinner held by Hearst and is appalled by the man’s attitude and takes immediate offence. Soon he’s telling Mankiewicz that Hearst is the perfect subject for his first movie. But Mankiewicz isn’t so sure and tries to warn Welles of the trouble he’ll face if he goes ahead with his plan.

Soon, however, they have a screenplay, and though the two men have a falling out over Mankiewicz’s name being removed from the final script, the movie goes ahead and production begins in earnest. But Welles is soon behind, his quest for perfection causing delays and production overspends. The industry, still unaware of the content of Welles’ movie, predicts it will be a disaster. It’s only when news of its focus reaches the ears of Hearst that the possibility of its truly being a disaster becomes more likely. Determined to ensure that the movie, originally titled American, is never shown in cinemas, Hearst brings pressure to bear on the heads of the other studios, partly by playing the race card – that the heads were all Jewish wasn’t widely known or acknowledged – and partly by threatening to expose the immoral activities of their stars. While everyone else around him views Hearst as being entirely capable of destroying Welles’ career, and their own if he so wishes, it’s left to Welles to fight for his movie. Help, though, comes in an unexpected form…

The story behind the making of Citizen Kane is often as fascinating as the actual movie itself, and though RKO 281 uses The Battle Over Citizen Kane as its template for John Logan’s vigorous screenplay, there’s still a sense that this is a movie going over old ground, and without achieving the same effect. Logan certainly hits his mark as it were, and there are some priceless lines of dialogue – Mankiewicz on San Simeon, the massive estate where Hearst lived: “it’s the place God would have built if he had the money” – but once Hearst becomes aware of just how much of his life Welles has appropriated for Citizen Kane, the movie makes an unjustified attempt at becoming a thriller, with Welles’ career on the line versus Hearst’s reputation. And despite a passionate performance by Schreiber, and with the outcome already known in advance, the movie struggles to make Hearst’s threats as worrying as they must have been at the time, and he comes across as a petulant control freak. The same can be said for Welles also, and the movie makes the point several times over that the two men were very similar, but in doing this so often, it lessens the impact of what the movie is trying to say.

Before then, the movie focuses on the making of Citizen Kane, and here the movie is on firmer ground, replicating the ups and downs of the production with a great deal of enthusiasm, and recreating events such as the time that Welles had a massive hole dug in the studio floor to facilitate a particular low-level shot he wanted (apparently he never thought of raising the set instead). His relationship with the cinematographer, Gregg Toland (Cunningham) is also explored, but ultimately it’s his friendship with Mankiewicz that gets the most screen time, and the ways in which Welles exploited his friend’s talent. Both Schreiber and Malkovich relish the dialogue they’re given in their scenes together, and these scenes are some of the best in the movie, with both men sparking and feeding off each other to very good effect. Cromwell injects a little bit of pathos into his portrayal of Hearst, but it’s not enough to offset the idea that here is a man whose monomania – himself – has become a lifestyle choice. As the former silent actress Marion Davies, Griffith gives a sympathetic and sincere performance, while Scheider is equally good as the put-upon studio head who puts his career on the line to ensure Welles succeeds in getting his own off the ground.

The movie is attractively shot and lit by DoP Mike Southon, and there are some well chosen contemporary numbers on the soundtrack, but though the script is good enough to tell the story in a slightly lumbering fashion (there are very few highs and lows to help capture the intensity of the production itself), Ross’s direction is too pedestrian to elevate the material above that of solid and dependable. Too many scenes lack the energy to push the narrative forward with any real conviction, while others are repetitive in nature, as if the audience wouldn’t understand things the first time. And that’s without the scene near the end where the story contrives to have Welles and Hearst alone in an elevator – let the verbal sparring commence! It’s an unnecessary cinematic cliché that’s included in a movie about another movie that was anything but clichéd.

Rating: 7/10 – a mixed bag of a movie, with good performances overcoming several narrative slip-ups, RKO 281 is mostly intriguing if you don’t know the story, and fairly run of the mill if you do; still, it’s a movie that’s largely entertaining despite itself, and as a passive recreation of the making of one of the most influential features of all time, it’s effective without being too demanding. (18/31)

Henry Creedlow (Flemyng) is one of Life’s true put-upons. Married to a woman, Janine (Garbiras), who no longer loves him, Henry fares no better at work, where he’s a mid-level executive for a magazine called Bruiser. The magazine’s owner is a sleazy mini-despot called Miles Styles (Stormare). Styles chides and insults and derides his staff, and acts as if they’re all inconsequential in comparison to himself. Henry is friends with Miles’ wife, Rosemary (Hope), who works as a photographer at the magazine; she’s unhappy because she knows that Miles is sleeping around at every opportunity. What neither of them knows though is that Miles is having an affair with Janine. At a party at Miles’s house, Henry sees his wife in a compromising situation with Miles and he confronts her about it afterwards. Janine is dismissive of his feelings and berates him for being “nothing” and “a nobody”. The next morning, Henry discovers something terrible: his face is covered by a white mask similar to the one Rosemary made, only he can’t remove it.

The mask has a strange effect on Henry. At first he hides from their maid, Katie (Pizano), until he sees her stealing money from his wallet. When he confronts her it’s a different story from the night before, and later, when he overhears Janine arranging to meet Miles, he follows her to the Bruiser offices. Rosemary is also there and she catches Miles and Janine in the act. After she leaves, and while Miles chases after her, Henry deals with Janine in his own way. The police become involved, and it’s not long before they’re looking for Henry, who is righting all the wrongs that have been done to him in the past. Finally, the only one who’s left is Miles. At a company party that Henry has arranged, he stalks his boss while the police come ever closer to catching him.

The movie that always slips past unnoticed whenever there’s any discussion of George A. Romero’s career, Bruiser was the last feature he made before returning exclusively to the world of zombies (with 2005’s Land of the Dead). It was also the first movie he made away from Pittsburgh. It’s certainly an odd movie, a French/Canadian/US co-production that’s a valiant attempt by Romero to do something out of the ordinary. That it doesn’t succeed entirely is perhaps not so surprising, as Romero’s ambition is stifled by budgetary constraints and an allegorical narrative that likely seems far more heavy-handed than he originally intended. Romero was well used to working with limited budgets – something which is sorely in evidence here – and Bruiser is one of those times when he was forced to work with some very strict, prescribed resources. But there are problems too with Romero’s script, and though he’s on top of the material, the plot takes several short cuts on its way to a less than satisfying conclusion.

The worm-has-turned scenario that Romero adopts lacks subtlety throughout, but as the movie progresses it becomes clear that Romero isn’t too concerned with how sophisticated his narrative is, or how it might be perceived. Henry’s aggrieved nature is the central focus here, and Romero signals this through a series of fantasy sequences where Henry imagines killing the people who upset him. These are the movie’s most extreme moments, designed to illustrate the depth of Henry’s pain at being ignored or belittled, and Romero stages them with gusto, hinting at the possibility that Henry has psychotic tendencies, a mental health problem that can’t be solved just by his being assertive or regaining his self-confidence. This gives the early scenes an edge as the viewer tries to work out just what it will be that will push Henry over the edge. And then comes that mask…

The mask is an amazing creation, and it proves eerie to look at no matter how many times we see it. But as an allegory, or a motif, for how Henry is regarded by his peers it’s a little too obvious, though still highly effective. Behind it, Flemyng is required to give a portrayal that’s mostly about body language – each time he angles his head he’s giving the viewer a very good idea of what he’s thinking or feeling – and his vocal performance, laced with a wicked, black humour, relays the various new emotions Henry is feeling with poise and precision. It’s a confident, nuanced performance, even when the script pushes things closer to melodrama than is required, and Flemyng, whose skill as an actor is often overlooked, keeps Henry from becoming just another revenge-happy psycho with a permanent axe to grind. Romero may occasionally let him down when it comes to some of the dialogue, but Flemyng avoids a few obvious bear traps and is consistently good throughout.

Less successful is Stormare’s over the top turn as Miles. Given free rein to chew the scenery and anything else in reach, Stormare is like a bull in a china shop, pushing the limits of his character’s hedonism in terms of words if not thankfully, deeds (the sight of him in what suspiciously look like spanks is another of the movie’s “highlights”). He’s like a pantomime villain, but one that you can’t take seriously, and Stormare at least is wise to this, and imbues Miles with a requisite lack of self-awareness. It’s a showy, breathless performance, but it does work well against Flemyng’s more measured portrayal. Sadly, Hope and Garbiras aren’t afforded quite so well rounded characters to play, with Hope stranded as Henry’s potential true love interest, and Garbiras stuck with being an admittedly very attractive, but dislikeable shrew.

As a thriller, the movie has its moments, and Romero still knows how to set up a compelling murder scene, but the setting for the movie’s conclusion, a Bacchanale party that features the band, The Misfits, gets away from him, and it’s undermined by some injudicious editing courtesy of Miume Jan Eramo. Better in terms of understanding what Romero is looking for is Adam Swica’s low-level camerawork which heightens Henry’s sense of displacement, and long-time collaborator Donald Rubinstein’s energetic, jazz-based score. In the end, Bruiser isn’t able to overcome many of the problems that hold it back from being an accomplished and entertaining diversion, but it’s also not as bad as its reputation might suggest.

Rating: 6/10 – a low-key yet mostly absorbing outing from a director who was never fully allowed to make the movies he wanted to make (and how he wanted to make them), Bruiser is a movie whose potential can be glimpsed throughout, even though it’s not been achieved fully; aided by a great performance from Flemyng, the movie does its best to provide a compelling narrative, but too many stumbles along the way make too much of a difference – unless you can forgive Romero for lacking the wherewithal to achieve greater things. (17/31)

A cheap and cheerful murder mystery – told by the lead detective in flashback – Death in High Heels is a “quota quickie” designed by Hammer Films (who had been dormant as a production company since 1937) as a way of reviving the company name and helping to fill the gaps in cinema schedules. Made on a shoestring, its tale of murder in a Bond Street dress shop is a perfect example of the material that Hammer looked to release at the time, and though it seems unremarkable at first glance, acts as a snapshot of the period, and what could be done on a micro-budget.

As already mentioned, the movie is set (largely) in a dress shop and is narrated by Detective Charlesworth (Stannard) as he recounts a tale of murder, jealousy and ambition. The dress shop is called Christof’s, and it’s owned and run by a man named Frank Bevan (Warrington). He employs a staff of seven: two supervisors, Agnes Gregory (Rose) and Magda Doon (Laffan); a designer, Mr Cecil (Hodge); three dress models, Victoria (Tee), Aileen (Anthony), and Almond Blossom (Wong); and a cleaning lady, Mrs ‘Arris (Gordon). Eight very different people all together, but with seven of them all united about one thing: their dislike of Miss Gregory. Sharp-tongued and unfriendly, Miss Gregory has earned the enmity of everyone at one time or another. She has attached herself to Bevan though, and when Magda is put in line for a promotion ahead of her, Miss Gregory does her best to get the job instead. When Bevan changes his mind, and gives the job to Miss Gregory, Magda’s unexpected death (which follows soon after), leads to a murder investigation.

The cause of death is poisoning, and by an acid that was brought into the shop by Aileen and Victoria in order to clean a hat. Most of it was spilt on the floor and then cleared up by Mrs ‘Arris who was supposed to have left it in an envelope on a table. But the envelope disappears before Magda’s death, and no one will admit to taking it. Everyone is a suspect, but Charlesworth quickly deduces that Magda wasn’t the intended victim, it was Miss Gregory, the poison added to her lunch but eaten by her rival instead. As his investigation continues, Charlesworth learns that some of the staff have secrets that may or may not be reasons for trying to kill Miss Gregory, and as he sifts through a web of lies and deceit, two main suspects emerge… but did either one of them try to poison Miss Gregory?

The answer is nowhere near as obvious as you’d expect, though it’s not really the point of this fast-paced little thriller, which seeks instead to shine a light on post-War Britain and the social imperatives of the period. Bevan is the haughty self-made man who enjoys the prestige that goes with having titled clients and a shop in London’s exclusive Bond Street. Miss Gregory has ideas above her station as well, and behaves badly towards the others because she rides on Bevan’s coat-tails and presumes an intimacy with him that allows her to feel superior to everyone else. Aileen’s “young man” is “very grand” and it’s her ambition to be as grand as he is, even though she’s from a working class background, the same background as Mrs ‘Arris. Mr Cecil is something of an hysterical ninny, a man whose sense of self-worth is reinforced by his mother. Only Magda and Victoria seem comfortable in their own skin, as even Almond Blossom’s aloof nature seems to be a cover for an unfortunate prior experience with Bevan. All this is neatly laid out in the nineteen minutes before Magda’s death, and all this has a bearing on the nature of Charlesworth’s investigation.

Inevitably, the secrets the characters have been trying to hide are revealed, and just as inevitably they prove predictable and of no relevance to the murder. But Christianna Brand’s screenplay, adapted from her novel of the same name, makes good use of the distrust amongst the characters, and even if to contemporary eyes there doesn’t seem to be anything too striking about the inter-relationships and the society in microcosm approach to the staff and their foibles, nevertheless, someone watching this seventy years ago would have recognised much of the social dynamic on display. They would have felt comforted by it to some degree, and even now the movie has that ability to reassure the viewer as to its intentions. Familiar territory then, and all the better for it; and despite some awkward line readings, it holds the attention and balances its various storylines with ease.

Though the performances range from arch (Wong, Rose) to overtly theatrical (Laffan), there’s still the sense that everyone is familiar with the material and knows what to do. Stannard gives a carefree performance that is amusing and relaxed, while Tee is confident and direct, and in their brief scenes together, a good foil for his breezy attitude. Tomlinson, whose first feature this was, keeps the camera as agile as possible given the confines of the sets, and uses his previous experience as an editor to give the movie a sprightly feel that adds to the pleasant nature of the material as a whole. It’s not a movie that will rock anyone’s world (not that it was ever meant to), but as a calling card to the rest of the British movie industry that Hammer was back and here to stay, it has to be judged a success.

Rating: 6/10 – it’s too easy to be dismissive of a movie like Death in High Heels, and too easy to ignore its obvious virtues, but anyone willing to give the movie the benefit of the doubt will be pleasantly surprised by its jaunty nature and effective character building; the low budget and sparse production values do hinder things, and some unnecessary narrative leaps and bounds in the second half don’t help, but overall this is a solid, agreeable mystery that deserves a wider audience. (16/31)

Before he became an actor, Martin Landau was an editorial cartoonist for the New York Daily News, a job he held from the age of seventeen before the lure of the stage claimed his attention at the age of twenty-two. In 1955 he auditioned – along with five hundred others – for the Actors Studio. There were only two successful applicants, Landau, and a young actor named Steve McQueen. While there he was also best friends with another young actor, James Dean. Two years later he made his debut on Broadway, and two years after that he made an impact playing a ruthless villain in Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.

However, despite further roles on stage and the big screen, Landau’s career really took off thanks to the small screen. Guest spots on shows such as Bonanza, The Outer Limits, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. led to a recurring, then permanent role on Mission: Impossible (1966-69). The role of Rollin Hand gave Landau the chance to employ a variety of accents and disguises, and it brought him international recognition. But he was never able to capitalise on the show’s success and transpose it into a better big screen career. TV continued to dominate, and during the Seventies he was best known for appearing in Space: 1999 (1975-77). It wasn’t until Francis Ford Coppola offered Landau a plum role in Tucker: The Man and His Dream that he began to experience the kind of career upsurge that he was long overdue for.

In the years that followed, Landau did some of his best work, and earned very high praise indeed from Woody Allen: “Of all the actors I’ve ever worked with, he gives expression to my dialogue exactly as I hear it. His colloquialisms, his idiom, his inflection is exactly correct. So of all the people who’ve ever read my lines, he makes them correct every time…” And in 1995 he won an Oscar for his role as an aging Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton’s excellent biopic Ed Wood. From then on, Landau continued to work as steadily as before, but often adding a much needed lustre to some of the movies and shows he appeared in. It could be argued that Landau had to wait until he was much older before he could give the performances that were tailor-made for him, but even if that were true, he still leaves behind a tremendous body of work – from the Fifties to the current decade – that we can enjoy for many more years to come.

Although best known for his series of zombie movies, George A. Romero’s desire to make movies came about when he saw The Red Shoes (1948), a movie so far removed from the genre that made him famous that it’s intriguing to wonder just where his career would have taken him if he’d followed in the footsteps of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and not fallen in with the low budget horror arena where he spent pretty much all his career. He was also a huge fan of The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), a movie he would rent on 16mm from the very same rental company that Martin Scorsese used.

But a career creating those kind of artistic endeavours wasn’t to be. Romero started out by making TV commercials and industrial training movies in and around his home town of Pittsburgh. In 1968, he and some friends all contributed $10,000 so he could make his first feature. The result was an unqualified success, and Night of the Living Dead became a movie that would influence an entire sub-genre of horror. From then on Romero was pigeon-holed as a horror director, and though he made a number of movies that didn’t involve zombies or extreme gore effects (usually courtesy of Tom Savini), Romero was always grateful that his first feature allowed him to have a movie making career.

Romero would return to zombies five more times in his career, and though the law of diminishing returns had set in by number five, Diary of the Dead (2007), there was still enough of Romero’s patented social commentary to make the last three in the series interesting to watch at the very least. But Romero’s work away from marauding members of the undead, often provided examples of the best that he could do. Martin (1978) is a creepy, unsettling modern vampire tale, with a great performance from John Amplas, and Knightriders (1981) is a counter-culture movie that features probably Romero’s best assembled cast, and a knowing, mordaunt sense of humour. He was capable of so much more but spent too much time developing projects that inevitably never got off the ground, such as a TV version of Stephen King’s The Stand, or movies such as Resident Evil (2002) where he was slated to direct. An affable, knowledgeable, and likeable figure within the industry, Romero will be missed for all the subtexts he put in his movies and for the way he made zombies “cool”.

There are some movies that seem to have been made expressly with the intent that they become cult items some time after their initial release. The world’s only vampire snooker musical, Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire is such a movie, a one-off that’s unlikely to ever be remade, rebooted, or given a sequel. It’s also very much a product of its time, a musical fable built around the real life rivalry between British snooker players Ray Reardon (the green baize vampire) and Jimmy White (Billy the Kid). Small in scale and very cheaply made, and dismissed by contemporary critics and audiences at the time, the movie has gained a certain caché over the last thirty-two years. Rarely seen these days, but available on DVD if you know where to look, the movie makes the most of its limited budget and if you’re in the right mood, offers a viewing experience that might just capture your interest.

The story is a simple one: Billy the Kid (Daniels) is an up and coming snooker prodigy. Just twenty years old, two years before he was discovered by T.O. (The One) (Payne), who now acts as his manager and promoter. Having made a name for himself, Billy is being touted as the next World Champion. He’s flash, he’s arrogant, he plays unsanctioned exhibition matches for money, and he’s as good as he says he is (maybe even better). His attitude earns him the ire of former nine times World Champion Maxwell Randall (Armstrong). A war of words erupts between them in the press, fuelled by manipulative journalist Miss Sullivan (Gold), and soon there’s talk of a challenge match.

T.O. brokers a deal with a loan shark called the Wednesday Man (Henderson) (T.O. is in his debt), and the match goes ahead with the added stipulation that whoever loses has to stop playing professional snooker. Randall shows off his prowess by winning the first frame with a maximum break of 147. He goes on to win the next seven frames, giving himself a seemingly unassailable lead of eight frames to nil, with the match being played over seventeen frames. During a break, Billy – who’s in shock at how badly he’s faring – and T.O. discover something about the match that changes everything, and when play resumes, a lucky break gives Billy the opportunity to play his way back into the match. It all comes down to the final frame. Which player will be able to hold their nerve and win the match… and how will they do it?

Shot in what looks like the basement of an old abandoned cement factory, Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire is definitely one of the oddest movies you’re ever likely to see, but even with its low budget production values and its over-reliance on sports tropes – the talented newcomer with something to prove, the aging player who resents the newcomer’s apparent disrespect for him and the sport, the manager with financial problems who puts the newcomer’s career on the line, the journalist who foments discord as part of her own agenda, the shadowy figure (here the Wednesday Man) who pulls all the strings behind the scenes – the movie still has a charm that makes it an easy watch, and by the end you can see why it’s gained something of a cult following over the years, and despite being very rough around the edges.

A collaboration between two creative talents for whom this would not have been a predictable choice, the movie has a solemn, well-constructed screenplay by Trevor Preston, and highly stylised direction by Alan Clarke. Both men had backgrounds in more gritty and realistic TV dramas such as the excellent Out (1978 – Preston), and the controversial Scum (1977 – Clarke). Though the screenplay does play things “by the book” and follows a well established template, Preston strays far enough from the template on occasion to make the story more intriguing, such as providing Randall with a home where vampire-related paraphernalia gives rise to the idea that he really is a vampire, and it’s not just a nickname. Also, Preston doesn’t give Billy a girlfriend who’s there solely to tell him how good he is and cheer from the sidelines. And the inclusion of rival sets of fans for the players gives rise to a battle of the classes that should seem out of place, but isn’t at all.

For his part, Clarke keeps the characters hemmed in thanks to the claustrophobic nature of the various sets, and this gives the feel of their being in a pressure cooker environment, where every little slight and criticism is blown up out of all proportion, and emotions run more intensely than they would do otherwise. However, this does give the movie a very theatrical feel, with Randall’s living room looking like a stage set, and the setting for the match, with its spectators’ galleries on three sides, also giving the impression of watching a filmed play rather than a movie. Clarke thankfully compensates for this through the editing, and although the movie never shakes off this notion fully, Clarke’s staging and framing of the action helps smooth things over as well.

As a musical, the movie is on less firmer ground than it is as a sports tale, and though the inclusion of several well written songs (lyrics by Preston, music by George Fenton) gives the movie a boost from time to time, not all of them work as well as they should. The opening song, Green Stamps, will baffle anyone born after 1991, while Kid to Break‘s repetitive nature quickly undermines the intended potency of the song as a whole, which seems to have been written as the snooker equivalent of a football chant. Two songs do stand out though: the vituperative I Bite Back, with its chorus and vocal counterpoint from Eve Ferret (it’s also the one song that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Broadway or West End musical), and the exuberant Snooker (So Much More Than Just a Game), sung by the match’s flamboyant compere, Big Jack Jay (McCaul).

The performances are spirited and engaging, with Daniels wisely abandoning his usual cheeky chappie demeanour, and Armstrong hissing his lines with thinly restrained anger. Both actors are on good form, taking the bare bones of their characterisations and fleshing them out beyond Preston’s original intentions, and looking very comfortable and authentic at the snooker table. Payne, whose career has never really recovered from his being the bad guy in Passenger 57 (1992) (though he was very good indeed in it, better than Wesley Snipes), is the surprise here, giving gambling addict T.O. a much broader, more sympathetic reading than was probably on the page, and making him the most interesting character in the movie. One thing that should be noted though, is that none of the cast are particularly good singers, and their voices aren’t always up to the challenges of the songs, which is a pity as the ways in which they interpret them, are very good indeed.

Rating: 7/10 – much better than it looks (just ignore Clive Tickner’s murky photography), and sounds (Randall’s squeaky shoes are a distraction), Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire is quirky enough and original enough to warrant closer inspection and a better reputation; Clarke squeezes a lot out of Preston’s screenplay, the cast are all on fine form, the songs reflect and enable the narrative, and the whole daft nature of the material – which is taken very seriously indeed – is exactly what makes it work as well as it does. (15/31)

NOTE: At the moment there’s no trailer available for Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire.

A movie examining the intellectual and professional battle between Carl Jung (Fassbender) and Sigmund Freud (Mortensen) may not be the most obvious choice for David Cronenberg to direct, but there’s long been a psycho-sexual element to his movies that fits in quite easily with Jung and Freud’s combative attitudes about notions of sexual repression (though even they may have balked at some of the ideas Cronenberg came up with during his Seventies output). What emerges though is a movie that concentrates as much on the machinations of the mind as it does on the pleasures of the flesh.

The movie opens in 1902, with the arrival of Sabina Spielrein (Knightley) at the Burghölzli, a psychiatric hospital in Zurich. Sabina displays extreme manic behaviour and contorts her body into uncomfortable positions as an expression of her illness. She is placed in the care of a young doctor, Carl Jung. He begins treating her using various techniques including dream interpretation (though mostly he just asks her how certain events in her childhood made her feel). Sabina responds to the treatment and soon she makes a breakthrough in understanding the root cause of her mania. Wishing to be a psychanalyst (the term Jung uses), Sabina begins to help Jung with his research. Soon, he begins corresponding with Freud, and before long they have a mentor/pupil relationship despite some of the differences in their approach to psychoanalysis (the term Freud uses).

When Freud recommends Jung treat one of his patients, Otto Gross (Cassel), the man’s indulgence of his sexual desires and his insistence that sexual repression is at odds with living a normal, healthy life, serves to make Jung confront his desire for Sabina. They embark on an affair, one that Jung’s wife, Emma (Gadon), tolerates, while Jung himself continues his professional and personal relationship with Freud. However, at the same time that their friendship begins to deteriorate over their different opinions about psychoanalysis, Jung is struck by guilt and seeks to end his affair with Sabina. She involves Freud on her behalf but while he sympathises with her (and more so because Jung has lied to him about the affair), he is unable to intervene. Soon, he and Jung end their relationship, and Sabina strikes out on her own as a psychoanalyst.

Adapted partly from the book, A Most Dangerous Method by John Kerr, and partly from screenwriter Christopher Hampton’s play, The Talking Cure, A Dangerous Method is a beautifully shot movie (by DoP Peter Suschitzky) that features a marvellous, deftly arranged score by Howard Shore (based on leitmotifs from Wagner’s Siegfried), and a richly detailed recreation of early 20th century Europe (some parts of which didn’t need to be de-modernised at all). It’s also a movie that outlines and explains in simple terms the differences between Freud and Jung’s different approaches to psychoanalysis, while at the same time doing so in a way that maintains the mystique that surrounded their differing approaches (and for many people, still does). It’s all down to Hampton’s intelligent, precise screenplay and Cronenberg’s effortless way of telling the story. There’s not a wasted scene or moment in the whole movie.

Cronenberg shows a sure hand throughout, and as the inter-relationships between Jung and Freud, and Jung and Sabina, and eventually Sabina and Freud, begin to grow more and more intense, he allows the viewer a glimpse inside the mind and the motivations of each character, whether it’s Jung’s fear of professional repudiation, or Freud’s unyielding pragmatism, or even the enjoyment Sabina derives from being humiliated. These are characters, real life people, that we can understand and, to a degree, sympathise with. They were all involved in the creation of a field of medicine that has since been of benefit to millions upon millions. That they had their own problems shouldn’t be a surprise, anf thanks to Hampton’s erudite and very adroit script, those problems are fleshed out with tremendous skill, and in Cronenberg’s hands, delivered with impeccable attention to professional and emotional detail. Jung may have been more willing to explore other avenues relating to the way in which our subconscious works, but even Freud’s rigid demeanour and intellect are presented credibly and with no small amount of rigour.

The director is aided by a trio of superb performances. Mortensen, playing older, gives Freud a shrewd gravitas, appearing always thoughtful, always seeking to understand the impulses that drive everyone around him (and especially Jung). It’s a role that requires the actor to appear ruminative for long stretches, passively observing and deducing, and Mortensen carries it off with his usual skill and ingenuity. He’s also the source of much of the movie’s dry, offhand humour. Mortensen is such a thoughtful, articulate actor that his presence acts almost as a guarantee of quality, and working with Cronenberg for the third time – after A History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007) – he renews that acquaintance to incredibly good effect. As Jung, Fassbender gets the lion’s share of the narrative, and gives a detailed, insightful performance that shows the doubts and concerns that Jung had in terms of his work, and his marriage, and his relationship with Sabina. It’s a well rounded portrayal, not lacking in emotional precision, and gives the actor a chance to impress in a role that requires much of the character’s feelings to be expressed internally, as befits both the period and contemporary public expectations.

How different then for Keira Knightley, who right from the very beginning has to provide an hysteric performance, one that pushes her as an actress and one that pushes the audience’s acceptance of her as a dramatic actress (there’s no doubt that Knightley can act; it’s just that it gets easily forgotten when she’s also a celebrity). She brings a passion and a commitment to the role of Sabina that is powerful and uncomfortable to watch in her early scenes, and even though she gets “better”, the character’s mania remains there, just under the surface and ready to release itself at a moment’s notice. Here, Knightley’s angular features are used to strikingly good effect as Cronenberg keeps her looking as if every moment is a struggle to continue to be “normal”. She and Fassbender work well together, and their scenes are some of the most potent in the whole movie.

As a movie dealing with the birth of psychoanalysis as we know it today, the arguments for and against the theories of Jung and Freud are presented in a way that makes them both intriguing, and elusive, in terms of their true efficacy. Both men were convinced their own approaches were the correct ones, but the movie doesn’t side with either of them, leaving the viewer to make up their own minds as to which man is “right” and which man is “wrong”. Cronenberg orchestrates these discussions with admirable finesse, and if some scenes seem too clinical or distant from the heated passions they’re depicting, it’s in keeping with the notion that Jung and Freud, and even Sabina, were first and foremost observers, and that their own lives were just as worthy of inspection (or introspection) as anyone else’s. And perhaps even more so.

Rating: 8/10 – a vivid and captivating examination of the ways in which early forms of psychoanalysis drew on the experiences and sentiments of its practitioners, A Dangerous Method is absorbing and exhilarating in equal measure; with Cronenberg handling the material so sensitively and without over-simplifying things, it’s a movie that stands out for being about complex ideas as to what makes us tick, and isn’t just a vapid exploration of carnal desires. (14/31)

What happens when a multi-award winning and very well respected director gets it completely wrong? The answer is a movie called The Skin I Live In. Since making his first feature, the anarchic Folle… folle… fólleme Tim! (1978), Pedro Almodóvar has presided over Spanish moviemaking like a benevolent enfant terrible, promoting home grown talent while making his own idiosyncratic movies and gaining an international reputation for flamboyance, passion and high-camp melodrama. He’s a true original, and a writer/director who has always been unapologetic about the movies he’s made, and their content (anyone who’s seen the opening five minutes of Matador (1986) will know what I mean). But sometimes, even the most innovative and instinctive of directors will take on a project they really should have steered well away from, and The Skin I Live In is Almodóvar’s. In attempting to fuse his usual movie making style with a genre he’s never worked in before, the director of such modern classics as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (1988) and High Heels (1991) has made his most unconvincing and mundane movie to date.

The movie begins with an old-fashioned two-pronged mystery; who is the woman (Anaya) being kept in a locked room by renowned surgeon Dr Robert Ledgard (Banderas), and why? As with all good mystery thrillers, there are no answers that are immediately forthcoming, just a number of clues and a few clever hints. What is clear is that Ledgard has been researching and cultivating an artificial skin that is resistant to fire and insect bites. And soon it becomes clear that he has been using this artificial skin on the young woman (whose name we learn is Vera). And for a while, that’s the movie. There’s a housekeeper, Marilia (Paredes), but she doesn’t appear relevant to the storyline or the plot. Oh, wait, here comes her criminal son, Zeca (Álamo), who’s on the run and needs a place to hide. When he realises there’s an attractive young woman in the house, he has one thing on his mind: sex, and whether she’s willing or not. Fortunately, Ledgard returns home (a little late, to be fair) and Zeca is “taken care of”.

It’s at this point that the script, by Almodóvar and his brother Agustín, decides its time to reveal just what is going on, and why. Cue a late-night confession from Marilia, a flashback from Ledgard’s perspective, and then, more intriguingly, a lengthier flashback from Vera’s point of view. This passage reveals almost everything you could need to know about what’s happening, why it’s happening, and how it’s all happened in the first place. The why, somewhat inevitably, is borne out of revenge, with Ledgard targeting a young man, Vicente (Cornet), for a particular misdeed that has gone unpunished. This futher explains what’s happening, and how it has all come about, but with the flashbacks out of the way, the movie begins to unravel as it heads for a melodramatic but also muted ending. And that’s without a coda that would work better as the beginning of a whole other movie.

Almodóvar has been quoted as saying that The Skin I Live In is “a horror story without screams or frights”. That may sound clever, or even something of a challenge to achieve, but the problem is that while Almodóvar may be good at exploring the lives of those living on the margins of Spanish society (very good in fact), when it comes to horror it’s obvious he doesn’t have the grounding or the knowledge to put together the kind of terrifying experience required of genuinely good horror movies. Instead, Almodóvar plays with his Frankenstein-lite scenario in such a way that he leeches all the horror out of it and leaves the audience with a soap opera melodrama that occasionally acts as a psychological or psycho-sexual thriller. Almodóvar isn’t really interested in making a horror movie; instead he seems more interested in seeing if he can fit horror themes into one of his standard dysfunctional family tragedies.

The result is a movie that proves disjointed and erratic when it comes to the characters and their motivations (Ledgard does a lot of things that are baffling or poorly thought through by the script), and which seems happier in observing things from a distance – much as Ledgard does with Vera. This makes it harder for the audience to engage or sympathise with the characters, and scenes where this might be regarded as essential in terms of building or maintaining tension, remain flat and unremarkable. Almodóvar is better off having his characters express their emotions, no matter how histrionic they might be, but here he opts for a restrained approach that gives the movie a chilly, displaced feel. It’s another bad decision that affects the movie greatly, and leaves the cast adrift completely. Banderas (reuniting with Almodóvar after a twenty-one year gap) plays Ledgard as a man determined on revenge but who makes some very strange choices along the way, while Anaya has the awkward task of denying her character’s back story while at the same time, needing it to perform her role adequately.

Ultimately, it’s a movie that doesn’t work because its director doesn’t know what kind of movie it should be in order to work. With that in mind, Almodóvar’s attempts at making his audience squirm, end up doing so, but for all the wrong reasons. Dread is replaced by unwarranted black humour, terror never has enough time to establish itself, and outright horror is knocked down and killed by a reliance on turgid melodrama. The movie may look good – Antxón Gómez’s production design is perfect for expressing the clinical, sterile environment that Ledgard inhabits – and it may have a surprisingly romantic score courtesy of Alberto Iglesias, but these are plusses that are unable to make up for the wayward, tonally artless moments that Almodóvar peppers his script with. When a horror movie fails in asserting itself as a horror movie and never quite realises where and why it’s going wrong, therein lies the true horror.

Rating: 4/10 – despite occasional moments where Almodóvar reminds us of his auteur status, The Skin I Live In is a movie whose purpose and raison d’être is never compelling enough to warrant the viewer’s full investment of their time; with way too many scenes in its last half hour that provide bafflement instead of suspense, the movie is proof that some directors should stick to what they know, and know what they should stick to. (13/31)

There’s a particular sub-genre of dramas where the protagonist travels to another country in order to get away from some trauma or terrible circumstance that has affected them badly, or which they were responsible for. Such is the case with writer/director Antonio Campos’ third feature, Simon Killer. Here the protagonist is recent college graduate Simon (Corbet), who has come to Paris following the break up of his relationship with a girl called Michelle. At least, that’s what he tells people, and especially Victoria (Diop), a prostitute he begins a relationship with, and Marianne (Rousseau), another young woman he begins seeing when things with Victoria begin to go wrong. He tells them that Michelle was seeing another man, and he has come to Paris to do “nothing at all” in the wake of their break up. But there’s more to the story than Simon is willing to let on, and as the movie progresses, just how much of his story is true becomes more and more relevant.

What also becomes more and more relevant is why Simon’s story might not be true. There’s no one to back it up, and no other evidence to support his claims. As he wanders through the city he meets Marianne and her friend, Sophie (Salet). His French is passable, but is enough to keep him in their company for most of the evening. The next day, Simon is cajoled into visiting a sex club, where he meets Victoria. There’s a connection between them, so much so that Victoria tells him they can meet up outside of the club (though he’ll still have to pay to have sex with her). Following an altercation where Simon is assaulted, he turns to Victoria for help. She takes him home, and in the days that follow, they begin a relationship. Simon, however, soon runs out of money. At first he “borrows” money from Victoria, and then he comes up with the idea to blackmail some of her clients at the club.

Their first attempt doesn’t go as planned, so they target another client, René (Solo). And then one day, Simon runs into Marianne and he asks for her number. The second blackmail attempt is more successful than the first, but their first intended victim (Abiteboul) finds out where Victoria lives and he beats her up. Simon tends to her at first but soon turns his attention to Marianne. They start seeing each other, but with no money, Simon decides to blackmail René again, but when he calls him, repeatedly, each time there’s no answer. It’s only when Simon receives a call from René’s wife who tells him that René has gone missing, that he goes back to Victoria. When he tells her they need to leave Paris immediately, Victoria’s reaction isn’t what he was expecting. Unable to get her to understand the seriousness of their situation, Simon reacts in a way that has unforeseen consequences.

Much of Simon Killer is kept hidden and obscured from the viewer by Campos’ artistic decision to be as elliptical and as cryptic as possible. If you’re a fan of movies made as a kind of intelligence test – can you work out what’s going on and why, and explain it in twenty-five words or less? – then this is the movie for you. And while there is definitely a place for these kinds of movies, when the movie itself can’t or won’t explain itself then the test is more about endurance than intelligence. What is clear is that Simon is damaged, and likely in a way that means he should avoid having close physical and emotional relationships (Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley is an obvious progenitor). An arch manipulator – he uses being assaulted as a means of eliciting sympathy from both Victoria and Marianne – Simon is unconcerned with the feelings of others, and he’s always a little off when he talks about his own; he’s the poor, put-upon victim trying just to get by, and seemingly always at the mercy of others.

As the nominally sociopathic Simon, Corbet is in first-class form, his performance the glue that holds the movie together, and which stops it from becoming entirely forgettable. For make no mistake, Simon Killer is not a movie that satisfies or works, even within its own narrow framework. True, it is stylish and colourful to look at, thanks to the impressive work of DoP Joe Anderson, and it has a powerful soundtrack that balances techno rock with a discordant, unsettling score by Saunder Juriaans and Danny Bensi. But it’s also distant and vague in its mood, and bleak in its outlook, using the backdrop of La Pigalle to overstate the sleazy, absentee-morality of most of the characters, and the seedy milieu in which most of it takes place. It’s also a movie that reliably frustrates the viewer by sending its main character off into the streets of Paris with no fixed destination to aim for, and providing only the back of their head as a viewpoint (Campos also includes several shots that are presented at crotch level; whether this has any real meaning is debatable). Why indie moviemakers feel this is an acceptable way of padding out their movies remains a mystery that may never be solved.

Another mystery involves the nature of his Stateside relationship with Michelle, which is addressed around the halfway mark via an e-mail from said character, but in such a way that it opens up a whole other conundrum that isn’t addressed by Campos, and which only serves to throw confusion into the mix as to Simon’s behaviour and the motives for that behaviour. Sure, he’s a borderline narcissist and sociopath, but something must be driving him. Alas, Campos either knows but doesn’t want to tell us or give us any clues, or he doesn’t know and doesn’t think it’s important. Either way, we can only guess at the true nature of Simon’s mental and emotional malaise. But only if we want to, though, because again, it’s only Corbet’s terrific performance that keeps the viewer anywhere near interested. Campos may be interested in focusing on making the movie a chilly, atmospheric thriller with a decidedly villainous central character – an odious one, even – but it’s not enough to make the movie as compelling or as enthralling as he might believe.

Rating: 5/10 – technically ambitious yet emotionally sterile thanks to the approach to the material by its writer/director, Simon Killer is beset with issues relating to pacing, tone and clarity; a laudable effort then on some levels, but as a whole, this is a movie that frustrates more than it rewards, and which is undermined by a reluctance to let its audience fully engage with its central character (not that you’d necessarily want to). (12/31)

When actors make the transition from appearing in front of the cameras to working behind them as directors, their first attempts at building a secondary career have a tendency to be remarkable debuts. Think Charles Laughton and The Night of the Hunter (1955), or Kevin Costner and Dances With Wolves (1990), or Sarah Polley and Away from Her (2006) (just to name a few). Well, you can add Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jack Goes Boating to the list. A movie that clearly shows that Hoffman could have had an equally lustrous career as a director as well as an actor (this was his only outing as a director), Jack Goes Boating sees him deftly handling comedy, drama, and romance in his screen version of the play by Robert Glaudini. It’s an unsurprising choice as Hoffman, along with Ortiz and Rubin-Vega, appeared in the original Off-Broadway production in 2007. The main cast’s familiarity with the material – similar to that with Fences (2016) – helps tremendously, but Hoffman is astute enough to transpose the action so that at no point does it feel stage-y or contrived.

The movie is terrifically understated from the start, with Hoffman’s shy, reticent Jack working as a limo driver for his uncle. He works with his best friend, Clyde (Ortiz), and the two have an easy going relationship that is affectionate and endearing. Clyde is married to Lucy (Rubin-Vega), but their relationship is on rocky ground, though they both help set up Jack with one of Lucy’s co-workers, Connie (Ryan). Connie is similar to Jack in that she’s shy and diffident; she also has some intimacy issues. Their first meeting goes well, and by the end of it they’re talking about doing something during the summer, such as boating. Neither of them have done anything like this before, and Jack is especially worried as he can’t swim. Clyde agrees to teach him, and in the process, Jack learns about positive visualisation, which helps him have the confidence to overcome his fears.

An incident involving Connie leads to Jack agreeing to make dinner for her, something nobody – aside from her mother – has ever done before. Clyde helps out again by giving Jack the name of a chef nicknamed The Cannoli (Inzerillo), who’ll show him how to cook a meal. But there’s more to The Cannoli than Jack is initially aware of, and as the night of the meal for Connie draws nearer, Jack learns more about his friends’ marriage than he was ever prepared for, while his own relationship with Connie grows stronger. On the night of the meal, the various stresses and strains affecting Clyde and Lucy come to the fore, and the evening descends into chaos, one that has repercussions for Clyde and Lucy, and has a profound effect on Jack and Connie…

What’s immediately apparent from Jack Goes Boating is the surety that Hoffman shows in guiding the material from its opening scenes where the script’s dry humour is given room to breathe, through the middle section where Jack and Connie’s romance takes centre stage, and then on into the final stretch where it becomes a stinging drama. Hoffman handles each stage of the movie with due care and attention to the characters and, more importantly, their inner lives. As a director, Hoffman is incredibly generous to his cast, giving them the room to explore their roles and instill them with small details that enhance both their performances and the movie at the same time. What this means for the viewer is a movie that delights and captivates in equal measure, and has the ability to leave said viewer wearing a happy grin for most of the movie. Hoffman and Ryan in particular do more with a look and a glance than some actors can do with a four-hour movie and two hundred pages of expository dialogue.

The romance between Jack and Connie is handled with a great deal of finesse, as the pair gingerly and carefully get to know each other, and try to overcome their lack of confidence in being part of a couple. Opening up to each other and trusting each other, the pair behave in a winsome manner that sees them warily circling around the idea of being together while at the same time, being eager to move forward as quickly as possible – as long as they’re both okay with that. In contrast, Clyde and Lucy are at the kind of loggerhead where intimacy is painful and recriminations for past misdeeds are just a breath away. Clyde grows to be jealous of his best friend’s good fortune in finding Connie, and his unhappiness threatens to ruin the meal. Lucy too is unhappy, and like Clyde, is dealing with her feelings in a way that’s detrimental to the possibility of their staying together. Lucy’s unhappiness also threatens to ruin the meal, and when things do begin to unravel, it’s Lucy whose anger finds its full expression in an excoriating attack on Clyde. As the warring couple, Ortiz and Rubin-Vega give outstanding performances, each imbuing their character with a potent mix of pained acceptance (that things are unalterably wrong between them), and a desperate need to wipe the slate clean (which they’ve tried and failed to achieve).

While there’s little here that’s new or hasn’t been covered before – Marty (1955) is an obvious forerunner – it’s the way in which Hoffman and his very talented cast handle the material that makes Jack Goes Boating so emotionally vivid and deceptively compelling. Jack and Connie are characters you can’t help but like, and you can’t help but root for them all the way through. And though they’re at odds with each other, Hoffman ensures that Clyde and Lucy deserve our sympathy as well. It’s all supplemented by a wonderfully expressive soundtrack that mixes an often poignant score by Grizzly Bear, and a handful of Fleet Foxes songs that contribute greatly to the movie’s overall tone and mood.

Rating: 9/10 – Hoffman’s death in 2014 robbed us of an inspired actor and director, and after viewing Jack Goes Boating, that sense of loss is more keenly felt than ever; beautifully observed and endlessly affecting, the movie is funny, romantic, tragic, and a terrific showcase for all concerned. (11/31)

Fritz Lang fled Germany in 1933 following a meeting with Josef Goebbels where Lang was offered a position as the head of the German movie studio, UFA. Up until that point he had made sixteen movies – seventeen if you include the French version of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933) – and he was the most successful German director of the Twenties and early Thirties, both critically and commercially. He made movies that were beautiful examples of the Expressionist movement, and he introduced many future staples of sci-fi cinema such as the countdown to lift-off (Ten, nine, etc.) which was first seen in Woman in the Moon (1929). Destiny was the second movie he made with his wife, the actress Thea von Harbou, and their collaboration helped Lang display a better understanding of women than he’d shown previously, making this movie more relatable for female audiences as a result.

A young couple (Dagover, Janssen) arrive at a village where Death (Goetze) is in the process of erecting a great wall around the land he has purchased. While they spend time in the tavern, the girl is distracted and her lover disappears. Later, while she weeps by the wall, she sees a ghostly procession of souls pass through the wall, and the last of them is her lover. She exhorts Death to release him to her but instead he leads her into a dark room and shows her three candles, all lit, but each at a different stage of burning. Death tells her that each candle represents a life. If the girl can save just one of these lives then Death will restore her lover to life. The girl agrees to Death’s wager, and finds herself in a Middle Eastern city during Ramadan. Now a princess, Zobeide, she has to secure the life of her lover, the Frank (Janssen), but she fails in the attempt and he is killed.

Next, the girl finds herself in Venice as a noblewoman, Monna. She too has to protect the life of her lover, Gianfrancesco (Janssen), from the murderous intentions of her fiancé, Girolamo (Klein-Rogge). In this she fails again, and next the girl finds herself in China as a magician’s assistant, Tiao Tsien. The magician has another assistant, Liang (Janssen), who is Tiao Tsien’s lover. When the Emperor of China (Huszár) tries to seduce her she rejects him, and attempts to flee the palace with Liang. But Liang is killed and the girl has to face Death knowing that she has failed his challenge. But Death gives her one last chance: if she can persuade someone from the village to trade their life for hers, then the lovers will be reunited. Of course, she accepts, but will she be able to persuade anyone to make such a sacrifice?

For a movie that contains three sections that might be regarded as fantasies, Destiny’s framing storyline exists in a dream all by itself. Taking place “in some time and some place”, Lang invites us to follow his two young lovers as they arrive in a picturesque little village, unaware of the fate that awaits them. Even the appearance of the mysterious hitchhiker can’t dampen their enjoyment of life and love. But Lang has other plans for them, and soon happiness is replaced by grief and the lovers’ dream-like reality becomes a nightmare. Lang was always fascinated by the idea of Death as a spectral, other-worldly figure, and the character appears in a number of his movies, but this was the first time Lang brought him to the screen. Goetze’s gaunt features and fixed stare are a disturbing, unnerving sight, and the actor imbues the character with an impassive, worrying stillness, as if he’s always waiting for that next victim of “God’s will” – and it could be anyone. Lang makes Death an implacable, emotionless adversary for Lil Dagover’s heartsick protagonist, and the contrast between their acting styles adds a fine juxtaposition to their relationship in the movie.

The opening section, with its idyllic setting and array of “colourful” village stereotypes, seems very like Lang attempting to wrong foot the audience. But Death’s presence is an augur that all isn’t as it seems, and the wall he erects around the land he’s purchased gives rise to that. But the young lovers remain unaware of the darker forces around them, until it’s too late, and Dagover is pleading for mercy for the life of her paramour. Happiness, Lang seems to be saying, is fleeting and can’t be relied upon. But if you want it badly enough, you’ll do whatever you can to keep hold of it. And so, Dagover’s chastened young woman must endure a series of travails that the audience can see will be doomed to failure, but which she must put her heart and soul into. There’s a phrase, Love Conquers All, but for most of the movie, Lang seems to be saying, Don’t you believe it. It’s this overtly pessimistic point of view that drives the movie forward, as each new scenario sees love thwarted at every turn, and Dagover’s determined character suffers more and more.

The three scenarios that the young woman becomes involved in all have an element of the fantastical about them, and depict a romantic idealism that reflects the feelings of the young lovers. Unavoidable fate and tragedy are the outcome of each tale, and Lang is resolute in denying the young woman any joy during these episodes. But the art direction – by Robert Herlth, Walter Röhrig, and Hermann Warm – along with Heinrich Umlauff’s striking costume designs – is a joy. Silent movies in 1921 were rarely charged with such expressive and impressive imagery, and it’s equally rare for a silent movie of the period to overcome the impression of appearing fake or overly theatrical (though Dagover does do histrionic with gleeful abandon from time to time). Lang was a master when it came to the visual styling of his movies, and Destiny doesn’t disappoint in this area. Allied to a script that deftly explores notions of love as an immutable force, and the will to endure for love, it features good performances from its cast, and strong, passionate direction from Lang.

Rating: 8/10 – a tight, purposeful script allows Lang to expand and build on the promise of his career up until that point, and he shows that there are no lessons wasted or ignored in his tale of love under threat; emotionally redolent and deceptively poignant in places, Destiny is a terrific example of a director finding his “groove” and having found it, never looking back. (10/31)

On May 7th 2000, outside a Ramada Inn in Jacksonville, Florida, a vacationing couple, James and Mary Ann Stephens, were accosted by a black man with a gun. Within seconds he had shot Mary Ann Stephens in the face, killing her instantly. He ran off with her bag, which contained her purse (which had around $1200 inside it), and other items. The murder took place at approximately 7:30 in the morning. A description of the assailant was broadcast to police vehicles in the area, with the warning that he was likely to be armed and dangerous. Around two and a half hours later, fifteen-year-old Brenton Butler was stopped by two officers in a police cruiser; he was on his way to a local Blockbuster Video store to drop off a job application. He was taken to the Ramada Inn where James Stephens identified him as the man who had killed his wife. Butler was duly arrested, and during his questioning by the detectives assigned to the case, he signed a confession. The case went to trial later on in 2000.

An open and shut case, yes? Certainly the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department thought so. Thanks to James Stephens and the certainty he showed in identifying Butler as the killer, the police looked no further than the teenager they had in custody. Not so surprising you might say. And you’d wouldn’t necessarily be wrong. But Murder on a Sunday Morning highlights the dreadful way in which the detectives on the case, James Williams and Dwayne Darnell, along with a colleague, Michael Glover, did nothing to properly investigate the case, but did all they could to coerce Butler into making a confession (which, in reality, he never did). As a miscarriage of justice, it’s frightening. As a cautionary tale about the perils of “swift justice” it’s also alarming. As a vindication of “the best legal system in the world” (a direct quote from the trial judge, Wendell Waddell III), it’s on shakier ground. This is a case that should never have gone to trial. The police knew they didn’t have a case, the State Attorney knew they didn’t have a case, but the trial went ahead anyway.

Thank heavens then, for Patrick McGuinness and Ann Finnell, two lawyers appointed by the Public Defenders Office to represent Butler at trial. It didn’t take them long to realise that the prosecution’s case was flimsy, and it didn’t take them long to work out a strategy for Butler’s defence that would be effective in exposing the police investigation for what it really was: non-existent. And thanks to Jean-Xavier de Lestrade’s excellent documentary, we can see how McGuinness and Finnell took on the prosecution’s case and dismantled it piece by piece. de Lestrade and his French crew were there from the time McGuinness and Finnell were appointed, all the way through the pre-trial period as they made their own enquiries, and then at the trial itself, recording the key exchanges that highlighted the police’s laissez faire attitude and their unwillingness to mount a proper investigation.

The movie adopts a straightforward, linear approach that allows the viewer to become increasingly involved with the case and the trial, and with Butler’s family as they try to come to terms with the enormity of what’s happened to their son. The courtroom scenes are mesmerising. McGuinness is like a quietly spoken pitbull, prodding and poking at the detectives and getting them to admit to their own inadequacies as police officers. Away from the courtroom, the chain-smoking McGuinness reveals his disdain for the detectives, and points out that if he has no respect for a police officer then he won’t address him by his rank; McGuinness wants that officer to be annoyed, to become antagonistic perhaps, because then they’ll trip themselves up and make his job that much easier. He doesn’t have to worry, or put so much effort in. Williams and Darnell and Glover – they do all the work for him. Their complacency is his best weapon.

As well as its linear approach, the movie is free from any frills or unnecessary embellishments, and it’s this plain and simple way of addressing the material that makes Murder on a Sunday Morning such a compelling documentary. When the story is this good, you don’t need to make it overly dramatic or accentuate certain points to be effective, and de Lestrade is wise enough to let the story tell itself. As the depth and breadth of the police’s ineptitude is revealed, the viewer is likely to be shaking their head in disbelief and wondering how on earth Butler’s arrest and subsequent trial could have been allowed to happen in the first place. But de Lestrade and his team show you exactly how it happened, and why (hey, let’s make sure this murder doesn’t affect the number of tourists that visit each year), and they also ensure that nothing is either lost in translation or through Ragnar Van Leyden and Pascal Vernier’s rigorous editing. Each point that the defence raises in opposition to the prosecution’s case is recorded precisely and with as much impact as possible.

By the time the trial reaches its conclusion and the jury retires to consider its verdict, the movie has delivered a crushing blow to anyone who may have believed in law enforcement officers as fair-minded, dedicated, and professional (at least in the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department). In exposing the failings of a murder investigation, and the officers who put more effort into railroading a fifteen-year-old into confessing to a crime he didn’t commit than they did looking for someone else who actually fitted the description James Stephens gave them originally, the movie proves compelling, gripping and powerful. And when the trial is over and the verdict is in, the movie has one more ace up its sleeve, a postscript that provides further evidence of the incompetence of the police.

Rating: 9/10 – sincere and expertly assembled, Murder on a Sunday Morning is absorbing, meticulous, moving, and profoundly shocking (count how many times Michael Glover lies under oath); the level of access that de Lestrade and his team had throughout the time that McGuinness and Finnell were involved is phenomenal, and even though this is a case that can be looked up on the Internet in seconds, it manages to keep you guessing as to what the verdict will be – and that’s no mean feat in today’s media-saturated society. (9/31)

If you were a regular moviegoer in the mid- to late-Nineties then you’ll remember there was a spate of inspirational movies that revolved around teachers going into difficult schools and classrooms and making an impact on the lives of their – up ’til then at least – rowdy and supposedly unreachable pupils. In 1995 we had both Dangerous Minds with Michelle Pfeiffer, and Mr. Holland’s Opus with Richard Dreyfuss. 1997 also saw Good Will Hunting, with Robin Williams mentoring Matt Damon’s maths prodigy. And 1999 gave us Music of the Heart with Meryl Streep. All of these movies had one thing in common: they pitted a committed individual against both institutional and cultural apathy within the US education system. But in amongst all those valiant portrayals and feelgood endings, one movie took an opposite stance. (Can you guess which one?)

Trevor Garfield (Jackson) is a science teacher working at a Brooklyn high school. One of the students in his class stabs him repeatedly with a shiv after being given a failing grade. Fifteen months later, and Garfield is living in the San Fernando Valley area of Los Angeles, and working as a substitute teacher. He gets a call to sub at John Quincy Adams High School for four days. Day one is something of a disaster. He starts off in the wrong classroom, and when he’s in the right one he finds himself having to deal with a disrespectful student called Benny Chacón (Sebastian). Benny is the leader of a local Chicano gang that go by the name K.O.S. (Kappin’ Off Suckers). When another teacher, Ellen Henry (Rowan), tells Garfield that Benny has threatened her in the past, Garfield is sympathetic but doesn’t have any answers for her.

Garfield’s time at the school is extended, and Benny disappears. Garfield and Ellen start seeing each other, and things seem to be settling down until Garfield’s watch is stolen during a class. Knowing that the new leader of K.O.S., César Sanchez (Collins Jr), is responsible, he reports it to the school principal (Plana). The principal appears more concerned with avoiding any potential law suits than investigating or backing up Garfield’s claim, and Garfield has to take matters into his own hands in order to get his watch back. This sets in motion a war of attrition between Garfield and Sanchez that is brought to a halt when Sanchez is attacked one night and one of his fingers is cut off. Knowing that Garfield is responsible but unable to prove it to the police, it’s only a matter of time before Sanchez decides to get even with Garfield. However their home invasion-cum-execution plan doesn’t go exactly the way they planned…

At the end of One Eight Seven, a caption advises the viewer that “a teacher wrote this movie”. If it’s meant to convey a truthfulness to the events depicted in the movie then it misses that particular mark by a wide, country mile. There’s little about this movie that makes any sense, and even less that appears credible. Narrative problems begin to make themselves known in the opening scenes, with Jackson’s earnest and more than a little worried Garfield talking to a superior, Walter (Riehle), about the death threat he’s received from a student. Walter behaves like an ass, and refuses to take the threat seriously. It’s an unlikely scene, and while it’s there to make a point that will become more relevant later on, it’s astonishingly clumsy. And it’s the first moment where the movie takes the viewer by the hand and lays everything out for them as if their ability to grasp the criticism that the schools system is managed by incompetent administrators is beyond them.

From then on, Scott Yagemann’s screenplay does its best to tick all the boxes relating to school-based clichés, and even throws in the talented student who lacks confidence/is bullied or abused (or both) (Arroyave), and who Garfield takes under his wing (he also agrees to tutor her at his home unsupervised, something that no teacher in his or her right mind would contemplate; more cynically, it’s an excuse for Arroyave to be shown naked). Equally problematic is the relationship that develops between Garfield and Ellen. On the one hand it’s yet another mixed race semi-romance that won’t go anywhere (they’re only allowed to kiss in this movie), and on the other, Ellen is there solely as the Voice of Reason, the one character who will remind audiences that vigilantism is a bad thing, and all while the movie promotes the opposite.

Because at its core, One Eight Seven isn’t about the schools system being in crisis, or how teachers are increasingly under threats of violence from alienated pupils. Instead it’s a movie taking a very provocative and very conservative stance. It’s saying, if you’re a teacher and you can’t get through to certain pupils because they aren’t responding to your teaching methods, then it’s okay to maim or kill them (the movie does try to make it seem as if Garfield’s innocent of harming Benny and Sanchez, but it’s too obvious that he’s not). It’s hard to believe that this is a recommendation being made by a former teacher (Yagemann worked for over seven years in the Los Angeles public schools system), but even if you dismiss it as a form of artistic licence, it still leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, and one that director Kevin Reynolds seems unaware of. Though not exactly known for making “message movies”, Reynolds still seems way out of his depth here, and the movie lacks consistency, with many scenes failing to engage the viewer or advance the plot.

For the most part the performances are adequate, with Jackson building up to the kind of vocal pyrotechnics that are expected of him even more these days, and Heard underused as usual as a fellow teacher who takes a concealed firearm to work (this isn’t challenged either; is Yagemann saying this is normal, or even okay?). Rowan has little to do beyond acting as a bundle of nerves, Plana is only required to behave obsequiously in a couple of scenes, and Arroyave is the Dangerous Minds alumni with a bigger, yet cruelly underwritten role. Only Collins Jr, for whom this was a break-out role and a break-out movie, injects any real passion or commitment into his portrayal, and his is the one performance that offers anything more than what seems to have been in the script.

Rating: 4/10 – flawed, and taking a reactionary stance that it tries to be ambivalent about, One Eight Seven crosses a line early on and never looks back to see if it should have crossed it in the first place; uninspired and leaden for long stretches, it’s a movie with an unpalatable message, and no idea (or intention) of providing a balanced viewpoint that might allow the audience to entertain any doubts about the issues under discussion. (8/31)

Question: when is a Woody Allen movie not quite a Woody Allen movie? Answer: when it’s written and directed by John Turturro… who’s had help from Woody Allen in assembling the script. A broad romantic comedy with a large helping of sympathy for its characters, Turturro’s fifth outing in the director’s chair is an engaging, likeable movie that has all the hallmarks of a Woody Allen movie, but then tweaks them in varied and surprising ways.

It begins with Turturro’s character, Fioravante, helping his friend, Murray (Allen), with the closure of his bookstore. Looking for a new business opportunity, Murray reveals that his dermatologist, Dr Parker (Stone), revealed to him during an appointment that she and a girlfriend of hers, Robbie (Vergara), are looking to engage in a ménage à trois. As Dr Parker is willing to pay for the experience, Murray suggests that Fioravante is the man they need, but he’s initially resistant to the idea. Eventually, Murray convinces his friend to take the “job” and contacts Dr Parker. She decides to meet Fioravante on her own to see if he will be suitable. He passes the test and soon, Dr Parker is recommending his services to some of her friends, while Murray is drumming up clients in his own fashion.

Fioravante’s success as an escort leads to an unexpected encounter. Through Murray, Fioravante meets the widow of a Hassidic Jew, Avigal (Paradis). They begin a tentative relationship that attracts the attention of Dovi, who works for Shomrim, a neighbourhood patrol. He has been in love with Avigal since they were teenagers, and he begins to follow her when she leaves the neighbourhood. While Fioravante and Avigal spend more and more time together, Dr Parker finally decides the time is right for the planned threesome to go ahead. But just at the point that Fioravante realises that he’s in love with Avigal, Dovi grabs Murray off the street and takes him to face a Rabbinic court. His involvement with Avigal is questioned, and it takes an unexpected intervention to resolve matters once and for all.

From the very beginning, Fading Gigolo is a genial, simple, romantic comedy drama that does what it does with equanimity, and which never tries to go beyond its basic remit. It’s this self-awareness that helps the movie immensely, and while the characters are largely stereotypical and written in broad brush strokes, Turturro’s direction encourages his talented cast to portray them with small, idiosyncratic details that help enhance the material as a whole. Turturro, both as director and actor, is generous with his cast, and his lack of selfishness in front of the camera is reflected in his largesse behind it. Turturro also encourages his cast to underplay their emotions and provide more subtle character beats than would be expected (Stone in particular is good as a confident professional whose vulnerability is revealed during her first meeting with Fioravante). There’s a lot going on below the surface a lot of the time, and more is relayed to the viewer by the characters’ expressions than by the dialogue.

This allows the viewer to respond to the material to a much greater degree than might be expected. As a result, the movie gains increasing credibility as a romantic drama, and the cast respond accordingly. As it slips off its comedic mantle in favour of dealing properly with the emotional and relationship issues that have arisen, Turturro ensures each development is accorded the relevant amount of sincerity and pathos (except for Balaban’s appearance as Murray’s lawyer at the Rabbinic court, a turn that is resolutely out of place, and is the one major lapse in Turturro’s direction). The emerging friendship between Fioravante and Avigal is treated with a tenderness and a subtlety that mirrors the mutual uncertainty that both are feeling, and Paradis perfectly expresses the sadness and the hope that Avigal feels as both a widow and a woman. In comparison, Turturro keeps his performance reined in, barely moving, and keeping his dialogue to a minimum, and yet still expressing his character’s anxieties and sense of anticipation. The outcome of their relationship is never in doubt – such is the entirely foreseeable nature of the screenplay – but when it comes it, it’s a brief and affecting moment that in a very succinct fashion, highlights exactly why the outcome is what it is.

Allen’s participation is unusual in that he rarely appears in other people’s movies these days – the last time was in Alfonso Arau’s Picking Up the Pieces (2000), which also featured Stone – but what isn’t a surprise is that he plays yet another minor variation on the neurotic Jewish intellectual-cum-nebbish he’s been playing for over fifty years. He does infuse the role with a desperate, greedy quality we haven’t seen before, but otherwise it’s business as usual. Fortunately, Allen’s presence doesn’t overwhelm things, and his supporting role is integrated effectively into the main storyline. Again, there are many similarities between this movie and others that Allen has made over the years, enough perhaps to make him feel comfortable in taking on the part. But though his involvement in the script has been confirmed by Turturro, this isn’t a movie that anyone could say Allen directed. Turturro has his own style, and he approaches the characters in a very different way from the way that Allen does. And faced with such a predictable plot to begin with, that Turturro does overcome it is a sign of the actor’s confidence in being a director.

Rating: 7/10 – funny and dramatic in equal measure, Fading Gigolo never loses sight of what’s important and at the heart of its tale: how much we want to connect, and how much we’re willing to give of ourselves in order to make that connection; Turturro makes it all look relatively easy, and does so by remembering that every character (even Murray) is looking for love in some form or other, and that even if it’s provided by an escort, it can still be fulfilling and/or the right choice. (7/31)

When Daniel Day-Lewis announced his retirement from acting recently, it’s likely that many of us felt the need to revisit one of his movies and remind ourselves of what a prodigious acting talent he possesses. That being said, it’s unlikely that anyone decided to watch The Ballad of Jack and Rose, a somewhat dour, slow-paced drama that he made between Gangs of New York (2002) and There Will Be Blood (2007). It’s a movie that benefits from Day-Lewis’s usual commitment to his roles, but aside from a grating Scottish-US accent and obvious weight loss late on, his role as Jack is perhaps his most low-key performance to date.

The movie is set in 1986 on an island off the East Coast of America (actually Prince Edward Island). Jack (Day-Lewis) is an environmentalist who first came to the island in 1967 when it was home to a hippie commune. Now, only Jack and his teenage daughter, Rose (Belle) live at the commune, which is largely rundown. Jack has a heart problem, and is trying to prepare Belle so that she can move on from the island and begin living her adult life. But Belle is resistant to the idea, and tells Jack that when he dies she will commit suicide because she doesn’t want to live without him. Looking for another way of getting Belle to interact with the wider world, Jack arranges for the woman he sees on the mainland, Kathleen (Keener), to come live on the island with them, and to bring her two children, Rodney (McDonald) and Thaddius (Dano), with her.

Their arrival upsets Belle immensely, and she withdraws from Jack while finding a friend in Rodney. Jack has a mission of his own to deal with, though, in the form of property developer Marty Rance (Bridges), who is building several houses on an adjoining part of the island. Jack is adamant that one of the houses is being built on government protected wetland, and he does his best to halt the building work. Meanwhile, the adjustments that everyone is having to make are beginning to cause friction. Rose’s feelings become murderous towards Kathleen while she also tries to get Rodney to sleep with her. He rebuffs her, and though Rose doesn’t like him, she turns to Thaddius. When Jack realises what she’s done he becomes angry with her, and tells Thaddius he has to leave the next day. But that night, an incident happens that causes Jack to rethink things in relation to Kathleen’s presence on the island, and following a further incident, his relationship with Belle.

For many, The Ballad of Jack and Rose will be about the performances rather than the story, with particular attention paid to Day-Lewis and Belle’s easy chemistry. After so many roles where Day-Lewis has been required to access his more macho side, seeing him here in a more vulnerable and sympathetic role acts as a reminder of both his range and his skill as an actor. Jack is a man of conviction who lacks self-doubt in the decisions he makes. And if Rose ever questions one of his decisions, his reply is the same: “new chapter”. He refers to the arrival of Kathleen and her sons as an experiment, but this is a sop to Rose’s animosity towards the idea, and he expects everything to go well without really thinking through the potential consequences. Day-Lewis portrays Jack’s oblique, trusting nature with a quiet yet detached authority that’s in keeping with the character’s attitude to those around him. He’s an instigator and a promoter but aside from Rose, he keeps himself aloof from other people. Even with Kathleen there’s a detachment that refuses to take her feelings about being on the island into consideration.

As Rose, Belle excels as Jack’s conflicted, emotionally inexperienced daughter whose need for his attention has grown into something unhealthy. Early on there are hints that Rose has inappropriate feelings for her father, but thanks to Belle’s ability to mask her character’s feelings whenever Rose is challenged about her behaviour, any suspicions remain fleeting. Her attraction for Rodney arises out of sexual jealousy, and her subsequent liaison with Thaddius is borne out of need and Rose’s capricious nature. Rose is very similar to her father in that she has assimilated his lack of foresight, and inability to consider any negative consequences for his actions. As such, she operates with no regard for other people’s feelings, and if she wants to punish him, even her father’s. As Rodney says to Rose at one point, “You’re innocent. Innocent people are just dangerous.” Belle’s portrayal of Rose as an emotionally stunted young woman whose development has stalled thanks to living in virtual isolation with her father is earnest and sagacious; it’s a shame her career hasn’t been more successful.

Other than McDonald’s sympathetic turn as Rodney, the rest of the performances aren’t as well crafted as those of Day-Lewis and Belle, but that’s due to Miller’s script and the ways in which she loses interest in them, picks them up, and then forgets all about them again. Miller’s script loses its focus from time to time, and as a result, it’s not as gripping in places as it might have been, and some of the arguments between Jack and Rose sound like the petulant exchanges you’d expect from teenagers. In the end, Miller resolves everything a little too neatly and in doing so requires Jack to make a complete volte face, something that Day-Lewis manages somehow to make convincing – even though in dramatic terms it isn’t. These and other aspects of the script’s construction stop the movie from being as compelling as it should be, and allied with Miller’s erratic framing, make this a movie experience that only partially succeeds in its somewhat limited ambitions.

Rating: 6/10 – if The Ballad of Jack and Rose had remained a two-hander throughout then it might have been able to offer better rewards for its audience, but as it is, it falls short of being entirely involving; too many distractions rob the movie of any lasting impact, leaving Day-Lewis and Belle’s contributions and Ellen Kuras’ splendid cinematography to save the day. (6/31)

When a movie begins by telling its audience that punk began, not in the UK, but in a basement in New York in 1975, then you can be sure that the story you’re about to be told isn’t going to be too concerned with getting all the details absolutely correct. Admittedly, that’s the prerequisite of any movie portraying real events, but when it takes the time and effort to make such a statement (and such a questionable one at that), then it does tend to make the viewer question the validity of anything else that’s depicted. (That said, if you pay attention to the closing credits there’s an acknowledgment relating to Iggy Pop that’s more than a little relevant to any notions of fidelity to the truth.)

There’s a saying that, “If you remember the 60s, then you weren’t really there”. In truth you could substitute “the 60’s” for “CBGB’s” and the saying would retain the same meaning. And with the screenplay by director Randall Miller and Jody Savin not having been based on an article or a book or a memoir, how factual it all is becomes very much the issue. Because as a remembrance of (mostly) good times past, CBGB is a massive disappointment. This should have been a celebration of a period when underground music was making a bigger and bigger impact on the wider music industry, and helping to shape the future for emerging artists. Instead it quickly defaults into telling a piecemeal tale where CBGB’s owner, Hilly Kristal (Rickman), continuously mismanages the club to the point of near-bankruptcy, scenes revisit the same issues time and time again, characters pop in and out of the narrative with little reference as to why they’re there, and the viewer gets to play Spot the Famous Band Before They Were Famous. And that’s about it.

As an evocation of the late Seventies/early Eighties, CBGB rarely strays far enough away from its Bowery location to give any indication of the musical and cultural changes that were going on elsewhere, and relies on newspaper articles being read out to provide any sense that the club is having any greater impact than at a local level. As a result, the movie maintains an insular and largely passive tone that makes even the more dramatic events – a New York shakedown, band The Dead Boys crashing their tour bus – feel bland and uninteresting to watch. Part of the issue is with Kristal himself, who is portrayed as a man travelling the path of least resistance, and who seems passively intent on ruining the most successful business he’s ever had (when we meet him he’s in bankruptcy court for the second time). While his business partner, Merv (Logue), and daughter Lisa (Greene), continually berate him for ignoring the basics of owning a club (like paying the rent), Kristal floats above it all, oblivious to the risks to the club and focusing on the bands coming through his doors looking for a stage on which to express themselves.

With the main storyline – how did Kristal manage to keep the club open for so long? – failing to provide anything meaningful for the viewer to connect with, it falls to the music to add some flair and excitement to proceedings. However, despite the level of talent that appeared at the club over the years, and despite some very obvious choices – Television, Talking Heads, Blondie, Ramones, The Police – the musical interludes lack for energy, even when Justin Bartha throws himself around as Dead Boys’ singer Stiv Bators. When even the music that’s meant to be celebrated can’t make a difference to things then it’s time to close the club (or shutdown the movie) and send everyone home.

Thanks to the script the performances have no option but to range from adequate to perfunctory. Rickman is on good form in terms of expressing Kristal’s blasé attitude, but it ends up being the whole performance. Everyone else is a secondary character, with Logue, Greene and Hawkins (as Iggy Pop) faring best, and the rest contributing what are mostly extended cameos. Rodriguez is the junkie Kristal gives a kitchen job to, Grint looks out of place as Dead Boys’ bassist Cheetah Chrome (who really cameos as a cab driver), Harris is Kristal’s mother who when told Stiv Bators has been known to jerk off into Hilly’s Chili remarks that she’s “had worse in her mouth”, and Akerman is so stiff as Debbie Harry you’d be happy for the real thing to step in and take over (and despite Harry being seventy-two). When you have such a great cast and they’re given so little to work with, it definitely qualifies as a waste.

As alluded to above, the fault lies squarely with Miller and Savin’s script, and Miller’s direction. With the screenplay lacking purpose, and much of the dialogue sounding like the co-writers’ did a first pass and kept to what they’d written, there are too many occasions where what’s being said seems trivial and/or unlikely given the circumstances on screen. Miller seems unable to inject any verve or energy into proceedings, and the movie trails along in a functional, pedestrian way that saps what little vigour the movie does possess. By the movie’s end it’s hard to work out what the motive was behind making it, but if it was in tribute to Hilly Kristal and his championing of the underground music scene, then it’s unfortunate that his influence is best exemplified by an end credits sequence that shows real-life footage from the 2002 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony. Here we get to see Talking Heads accepting their award and inviting Kristal up on stage with them, and then thanking him for his support. Sadly, it’s the most poignant and moving moment in the whole movie.

Rating: 4/10 – lacking a clear purpose and repeating itself too often, CBGB at least has a killer soundtrack to fall back on – and thank heavens for that; less a biopic than a slow trawl through a defining era in the history of rock music, the movie spends too much time trying to define the iconic nature of the club, and in doing so, fails to portray adequately its influence on the wider music scene. (5/31)

In pretty much every actor’s filmography there’s usually at least one movie that hardly anyone ever sees, and slips past audiences like a whisper in the night. These movies are often ones that have been made quickly and cheaply, with mid-range stars either on their way up the Ladder of Stardom, or heading back down it. Sometimes they’re movies that have been made for an international market, with said mid-range stars heading up a European or African or Far Eastern cast, and sometimes only appearing for maybe a third of the movie’s running time. And sometimes, those mid-range stars have taken part as a favour to the director, or a producer, or someone else attached to the project. In essence, they’re jobbing gigs, a somewhat easy payday for the actor(s) concerned, and one that they’ll look back on only if pressed.

It’s hard to determine if there really is a market for these kinds of movies. There are enough of them out there to prove that people are willing to invest in them, but often it’s hard to determine who is the target audience (aside from any fans of the stars that appear in them). And one such movie is The Bumblebee Flies Anyway, a feature that appeared at the Deauville Film Festival in September 1999, opened briefly in the US in January 2000, and hasn’t been seen in cinemas anywhere in the world since. If you’re one of the few people who saw it way back then, then you probably already know the reason why it had such a limited exposure. And that’s because it’s bad, so very, very bad.

Adapted from the novel of the same name by Robert Cormier, The Bumblebee Flies Anyway has all the appeal of the kind of car crash it opens with (or actually, that it doesn’t open with; there isn’t the budget to stage a proper car crash). Poorly staged and leaden-footed throughout, the movie is achingly stilted, with careless attempts at characterisations, and a set up that nearly disappears under the weight of its own inconsequence. This is an adaptation that makes less and less sense the longer it goes on, and Jennifer Sarja’s screenplay sacrifices dramatic tension in favour of soap opera theatrics at nearly every opportunity, while also leaving the cast stranded on a desert island of inane dialogue. (This is Sarja’s only credited screenplay, and it’s not difficult to work out why.)

The story itself is puzzlingly obscure, with Elijah Wood’s car crash amnesiac, Barney Snow (no, really) taking part in a medical experiment designed to help him deal with his involvement in the crash and move on with his life. But he’s receiving his treatment in a medical facility for terminal cancer patients, all of whom are teenagers or younger (well, all actually means three). Barney is kept on medication (or “the merchandise” as he keeps calling it for no apparent reason), and is sedated every now and again and taken to a basement room where he undergoes some form of regressive hypnotherapy (which he doesn’t know about). Meanwhile he makes friends with bone cancer sufferer Mazzo (Perrino), kidney cancer victim Billy (Gore II), and undisclosed cancer patient Allie (Force). The movie tries to present their respective illnesses with as much poignancy as it can, particularly Mazzo’s, but does so in a way that makes Billy and Allie look like poster boys for cancer remission. As Mazzo gets worse and worse, he receives a visit from his twin sister, Cassie (Cook). Concerned about her brother she naturally turns to Barney for comfort and they begin a tentative romance (well, what else are they likely to do?).

But Barney has his own problems. He has a memory of the car crash and a woman stepping out in front of his car that just won’t go away. He thinks the woman is his mother but he can’t remember her name. When he does he persuades Billy to help him locate her address, and gets Cassie to drive him there. The visit doesn’t go as planned, and subsequent treatments by Barney’s doctors, Harriman (Garofalo) and Croft (Rees), cause further memories to surface, and in them, Barney learns about the basement room and the inherent contradiction that exists at the heart of his treatment. Soon he has a difficult choice to make, one that will have far-reaching consequences whichever way he decides. But before then he makes another difficult choice, and this time it’s one with the potential to affect everyone around him.

Everything about Barney’s predicament and the so-called medical facility that he resides at is so ridiculous it’s hard to take any of it seriously. Garofalo’s caring doctor advises Barney not to get attached to Mazzo et al, but he finds himself drawn into their worlds almost against his will, and not caring about them doesn’t become an option. None of it however, is compelling or dramatic enough to make the unsuspecting viewer care about any of them, and the cast find themselves endlessly bogged down in scenes that should be affecting but which are so flatly directed by Duffy that they inspire ennui instead. Indeed, the combination of Duffy’s pedestrian direction and Sarja’s lumbering screenplay leaves Wood and his co-stars struggling to inject any purpose into their performances, and any meaningful exchanges between the characters are undermined before they’ve even begun. It all leads to a rooftop “showdown” that is laughable instead of sincere, and insufferably trite instead of emotionally haunting. Not the best outcome for a movie that already has enough strikes against it to warrant an enquiry into just how it received a showing at Deauville in the first place.

Rating: 3/10 – a perfect example of why some movies get the barest of releases, The Bumblebee Flies Anyway is dramatically inert from start to finish and offers proof (if any were needed) that the presence of a “name” actor is no guarantee of quality; shoddy in every department, and with platitudes masquerading as dialogue, it’s not even fascinating in an “oh no they didn’t” kind of way (which might at least make it halfway bearable to watch). (4/31)

Some movies that garner a reputation for being “obscene” or “perverted” upon release generally don’t have a long shelf life, and soon fade not into obscurity exactly, but rely on gaining a cult following to ensure they’re still watched and talked about. And any such movie certainly won’t expect to be critically lauded, or attain cult status amongst those who’ve seen it unless it has something that no one other movie can offer, and John Waters’ Multiple Maniacs has that something: the amazing, human tornado of strident perversion called Divine.

Waters’ early work – this is his second feature – is synonymous with the rise of Harris Glenn Milstead as the merciless, murderous-minded, savagely anti-establishment grotesquerie known as Divine. This is a movie that puts itself out there as being counter-culture entertainment, a bargain basement, shot-on-16mm trash bag of arch religious references, austere social commentary, and documentary-like footage. It doesn’t look or feel like a standard issue movie because Waters has deliberately chosen to shoot it in such a diffuse, non-professional way that it often looks like a collection of outtakes strung together for convenience rather than a truly finished product where everything was shot as planned and nobody forgot their lines in the middle of a scene (which happens here a lot). There’s also a lot of guerrilla moviemaking, as outdoor scene after outdoor scene reveals a member of the public looking on in confusion and/or horror at what they’re witnessing (Divine in various states of undress and challenging middle class perceptions of good taste).

Beneath all the amateur hour shenanigans and louche bravado of its characters though, Waters’ ode to unrestrained perversion is touchingly conservative in its approach, and nowhere near as bizarre as it wants you to believe. Part of the appeal of Waters’ movies in the early Seventies is their deliberate inversion of public, social and moral standards, and the ways in which Waters’ gleefully attempted to subvert the cultural values of the time. Waters was only twenty-four when he made Multiple Maniacs, but it feels like a movie made by a rebellious teenager taking pot shots at his parents (the religious elements) and the passive determinism of the denizens of his home town of Baltimore. It’s no wonder Waters wants to shake things up and challenge the status quo; he’s a young man still working out his issues from growing up.

In Multiple Maniacs, this kind of celluloid psychotherapy finds its best and truest expression in the form of Lady Divine (Divine, naturally) and her Cavalcade of Perversion, the travelling freak show she fronts as a way of making money (by robbing the poor fools who are persuaded to see the show), and espousing her contempt for society. Lady Divine surrounds herself with “assorted sluts, fags, dykes and pimps” because they share her disdain for more traditional adult roles. They’re the protesters and the dissenters, acolytes who share her (and Waters’) disapproval at the way society treats the disenfranchised and the socially excluded. Lady Divine would kill them all if she could, but Waters’ Catholic upbringing precludes such extreme measures, and though his transgressive alter ego does kill on a handful of occasions, and even feasts on the entrails of one of her victims, when she’s finally consumed by a murderous mania, the most violent act she commits is to take a sledgehammer to a car.

The movie’s more violent excesses are leavened by unintentional moments of levity, such as when Lady Divine attempts to stab her new friend, the Religious Whore (Stole), and begins her attack by stabbing the air above the character’s head, an obvious concession to the fact that Divine is wielding a real knife and doesn’t want to hurt his co-star. And towards the end, when Lady Divine is chasing dozens of people through the streets of Baltimore, her terrifying creature moment is undermined by the number of faces that are displaying laughter instead of terror. But through it all, Waters makes no apologies for the excesses he portrays, and he burns any religious bridges he may have had access to by juxtaposing Christ and the Stations of the Cross with Lady Divine being anally pleasured by a rosary-wielding Mink Stole. It’s profane and it’s crass but it’s still just Waters railing against the formalities and restrictions imposed by organised religion.

When Waters isn’t expressing his dissatisfaction with contemporary morality, he’s holding up a mirror to contemporary issues as well, with mentions of the murder of Sharon Tate – Lady Divine tortures her boyfriend, Mr David (the splendid David Lochary), with the possibility he was involved in her murder – and various references to the war in Vietnam. And he’s surprisingly waspish when it comes to notions of the nuclear family, with Lady Divine doting on her somewhat promiscuous daughter, Cookie (Mueller), while submitting to the attentions of glue-sniffing rapists, Miss Stole and her beads, and a giant lobster (Lobstora) that appears out of nowhere and sets her on the road to sexually-induced hysterical violence. And the idea that Mr David could be seeing another woman, Bonnie (Pearce), whips her into a hypocritical frenzy (and allows Waters’ favourite Edith Massey to provide her first mangled performance in one of his movies).

The dialogue is suitably terse and aggressive, as befits a group of characters who are angry at themselves and the wider world, and though the performances are what you’d have to charitably regard as “authentically naïve”, there’s a rude energy to it all that more than makes up for the deficiencies of shooting on such a low budget. Waters opts for some uncomfortable close ups to highlight the pains and suffering felt by his characters, and doesn’t always worry if those images are distorted or out of focus (one gets the feeling a lot of scenes and shots were the first, and only, take). This adds to the documentary tone the movie adopts and exploits from time to time, and shows that Waters was very much aware of the concept of cinema verité when he was putting his movie together. All of which makes Multiple Maniacs a more heartfelt and poignant movie than may be expected, and shows that, despite all the attempts at shocking its audience, the movie is as much an ode to treating people of all walks of life fairly as it is about exposing the social injustices that stop this from happening. This leaves John Waters looking very much like a social reformer – and who would have thought that?

Rating: 8/10 – a trial by fire for anyone unfamiliar with Waters’ early work, Multiple Maniacs nevertheless works on many levels and is unremittingly earnest in its exposure of small-minded hypocrisy amongst middle-class America and its apologists; for all the sturm und drang on display though, it’s a tract that preaches acceptance but only insofar as you conform to the way society expects you to behave – and if you don’t, then society will call out the National Guard. (3/31)

If you’ve ever thought that hype and horror go together like Tom Cruise and Scientology (in that they both support each other), then The Human Centipede (First Sequence) is a prime example of that particular maxim. Even its production, where the investors were kept in the dark about the nature of the “conjoining” writer/director Tom Six had in mind, added to the perception that here was a movie that was setting out deliberately to shock audiences and in the worst imaginable way possible. And soon, the hype took over, as word got out that Six’s movie would show people joined mouth-to-anus as part of a medical experiment carried out by the movie’s main character. And just that idea, that you would see three people joined together in such a way – with their mouths actually grafted onto someone else’s anus – was all the movie needed to attract a huge amount of attention. And outrage. Let’s not forget the inevitable outrage. Regarded by many as “sick” and “depraved”, the movie’s success was assured from the moment it’s raison d’être became known.

But more often than not, hype has a nasty way of proving itself to be unfounded. The greater the outrage, the less outrageous a movie usually is. The more critics charge a movie with being “disgusting” the less likely it is that it will be. And The Human Centipede (First Sequence) fits these requirements almost perfectly. It’s ostensibly a horror movie, it has a shocking central idea, and it makes no apologies for its existence. In short, it’s a success exactly because of the approbrium heaped upon it. But is it “sick”, “depraved”, or “disgusting”? The answer is an easy one: No.

What Six did was to take a crazy idea for a horror movie, pull together the funding needed to make it, and then give his project as much pre-release build-up as he could before unleashing it on a very suspecting world. And most everyone saw what he wanted them to see: a movie described as “sick”, “depraved”, and “disgusting” but which wasn’t. The movie that Six actually made was very much a standard monster movie with an opening section that riffed on slasher movies in an effort to lull audiences who weren’t aware of the movie’s content into thinking they were going to see yet another masked psycho feature. And so we’re introduced to Lindsay (Williams) and Jenny (Yennie), two Americans touring Europe who’ve reached Germany and find themselves stranded on a dark and lonely country road, and with no idea where they are (and surprise, surprise, they can’t get a phone signal). Instead of sticking to the road they head off into the woods, get even more lost, and bicker between themselves until they discover a house handily located in the middle of said woods. A safe haven at last. Or is it?

Of course, we all know the answer to that one, as the house is the home of the man we’ve seen right at the beginning of the movie aiming a sedative gun at a truck driver who’s defecating behind some bushes. One glass of water with a Rohypnol chaser (for Jenny), and a sedating injection (for Lindsay) later, and the man of the house, retired surgeon Dr Josef Heiter (Laser), has the girls cuffed to surgical gurneys in his basement and being prepped for an advanced procedure of his own design. But the truck driver has been a poor choice and has to go. And so, Japanese tourist Katsuro (Kitamura) finds himself abducted and taking the driver’s place. Lindsay makes an escape attempt, which in turn inspires Heiter’s admiration for her, and his decision to make her the middle part of his human centipede. The operation goes ahead, the three are joined together, and for a long while the movie forgets that it needs to expand on its basic premise and that seeing three people in what look like oversized nappies crawling around on the floor isn’t very enthralling. Thank God, then, that two cops (Leupold, Blankenstein) come looking for any missing tourists the doctor may be keeping hidden, and the movie can head for the finish line without any further delay.

If much of the previous paragraph sounds as if the movie isn’t being taken too seriously, then that’s because it isn’t. You only have to look at the image above to know that this is a movie that shouldn’t be taken seriously by anyone, and even less so as a horror movie. While it does include a number of traditional horror tropes – the mad doctor, the creature that never wanted to be born, the creature turning on its creator – The Human Centipede (First Sequence) never aspires to doing anything remotely meaningful with them, or provide any subtext beyond a risible connection with experiments carried out by the likes of Dr Josef Mengele during World War II. This leaves the movie looking and sounding rather flat once the human centipede is put together. Kitamura shouts a lot, Williams and Yennie groan and cry a lot, and Laser struts around like the ruler of a kingdom only he can see.

This is a movie where we’re supposed to be horrified at the sight of three people connected in a way that wouldn’t look too out of place in a porn movie. Does this make the movie “sick”, “depraved” or “disgusting”? (Spanish audiences didn’t think so; they found the movie funny, and laughed throughout screenings.) Ultimately, this is a minor horror movie elevated through hype into something that it’s not. Six should be congratulated for bringing his movie to a wider public awareness, but it’s also a movie that betrays its Seventies Euro-horror and Cronenbergian influences at every turn. And if you’re holding out for some gore-soaked thrills, you’ll be disappointed there as well: what little there is has been done before, and on too many occasions to make Six’s efforts stand out from the crowd. If it’s real body horror you’re after, then go see Brian Yuzna’s Society (1989). Now there’s a movie where mouth to anus really is just the beginning.

Rating: 4/10 – an uninspired horror movie that holds back from being as exploitative as it sounds, The Human Centipede (First Sequence) is a triumph of carefully planned marketing and narrative shortcomings; bolstered by Thomas Stefan’s antiseptic production design and Goof de Koning’s angular cinematography, the movie promises a lot that it never follows through on, and in the end is too reliant on the so-called “shock value” of its basic premise to be anywhere near as effective as it should be. (2/31)

The British writer/director/editor Ben Wheatley has made six movies to date, all of which have been greeted warmly by critics, but less so by audiences. So what does this say about the movies Wheatley makes? Or the critics that review them so favourably? Or the audiences who aren’t as moved as the critics? Well, like any discerning director, Wheatley makes the movies he wants to make. He’s not singing or dancing to anyone else’s tune, and he’s never been just a director for hire. His movies are personal to him (and his co-writer/co-editor, and wife Amy Jump), and he brings his own unique visual aesthetic to them. Perhaps it’s this individuality of purpose that makes him so popular with the critics. But still, wider audiences haven’t taken to Wheatley’s movies, and he remains a movie maker with a great deal of critical caché but very little box office appeal.

Is this fair? Possibly not, but Wheatley’s distinctive approach to making movies isn’t always as welcoming as it could be. His fourth movie, A Field in England, is probably the best example of how his distinctive approach can get in the way of making a movie accessible, or even fundamentally appealing. Set during an English Civil War battle, the movie begins with Reece Shearsmith’s cowardly alchemist’s assistant, Whitehead, crashing through a hedge and cowering in fear from his pursuer, Commander Trower (Barratt). Rescued by a soldier named Cutler (Pope), the pair also encounter a couple of deserters, an alcoholic called Jacob (Ferdinando) and his witless companion, Friend (Glover). They decide to leave the battle and travel to an alehouse that Cutler tells them isn’t far away. They begin crossing a field that’s ringed by mushrooms, and Cutler forces Jacob and Friend to eat them. Things begin to a turn for the weird when the men seemingly haul an Irishman named O’Neill (Smiley) from out of the ground. He quickly assumes control of the group and convinces them that there is treasure buried in the field, and traumatises Whitehead into become a kind of human divining rod in order for them to know where to dig.

What follows is a series of events and episodes that may or may not be the result of the men ingesting the mushrooms, as hallucinations and psychotic breaks affect the whole group except for O’Neill (who may be real and then again he might not be; his provenance is doubtful). And this is the point where what occurs, and what follows, can’t be trusted. If you accept that Wheatley has sent his characters on a really strange trip, then you can go with the flow quite easily and just accept what you’re seeing without worrying about what it might all mean. But if you do need to know what it all means, then the rest of the movie is going to be problematic for you.

Wrongly or rightly, deliberately or accidentally, A Field in England is a movie that takes a huge stylistic and narrative gamble around the half hour mark and never looks back. It maintains a semblance of traditonal storytelling but filters it all through a succession of moments of bravura visual and sonic experimentation. At one point, while being chased by O’Neill, Whitehead shoves mushroom after mushroom into his mouth and Wheatley uses it as a cue to transport the viewer into Whitehead’s mind and expose them to the kaleidoscopic and fantastical visions that the character is experiencing. It’s a tremendous feat of editing, combining fractured and composite visuals with an overwhelming audio conflation of natural sound and music, and it’s far and away the standout moment… but, exceptional as it is, it’s also indicative of the way in which Wheatley and Jump have decided to treat the narrative, and the material as a whole.

As the movie progresses, and the characters experience vision after hallucination after extended fever dream, it becomes clear that the story, such as it is, has been abandoned in favour of transporting the viewer into a world where anything Wheatley and Jump can come up with is the new norm, and regardless of whether it makes sense or not. What makes this all the more frustrating is that the dialogue and the characterisations, which were so redolent during the movie’s first half hour, are also abandoned, and the characters – literally – all become pawns to be moved around the field at random, and until Wheatley can set up the final showdown between Whitehead and O’Neill (which ends with a line from Whitehead that has Eighties action movie cliché written all over it; not bad for a movie set during the English Civil War). In the end, the viewer has no choice but to go along with what’s happening, because Wheatley isn’t giving them a choice; and if it doesn’t make sense – which a lot of it doesn’t – then it’s too bad.

But where the movie scores highly is in its imaginative cinematography, courtesy of DoP Laurie Rose (who has lensed all of Wheatley’s movies). The crisp, pin-sharp black and white images are hugely immersive, and close ups are rendered in such a precise, detailed fashion that there are several moments where the urge to pause the movie and savour the image is irresistible. It’s a movie that’s staggeringly beautiful at times, and if it’s ever released in a 4K UHD version it would be an even more incredible viewing experience. Full marks too to sound designer Martin Pavey and composer Jim Williams for combining their work in a way that adds so much resonance to the images, and helps accentuate the profoundly disturbed states of mind of the characters once their real “journey” has begun. Without these elements – the imagery and the soundtrack – A Field in England would definitely suffer further, but thankfully they more than make up for the errant narrative and directorial choices that Wheatley has made.

Rating: 6/10 – impressive visuals and an equally impressive soundscape aren’t enough to stop A Field in England from being a disappointing, and frustrating viewing experience; loaded with style and directorial flourishes, it neglects its storyline in favour of these approaches, and leaves the movie struggling to retain any meaning, which makes it an exercise in style that overwhelms any substance it may have had in the beginning. (1/31)